Open House (8 page)

11

I
AM STANDING AT THE LIVING
-
ROOM WINDOW, WATCHING
for King’s car. He is taking me to the employment agency he works for. “You don’t need any experience for lots of these jobs,” he’d said. “Alive and ambulatory, you’re in their
A
-plus bracket.”

Lydia, who is on the sofa with a large-print novel, sighs and puts her book down.

“What,” I say.

“Are you grinding your teeth? Is that the noise I’m hearing?”

“I’m not grinding my teeth.”

“I could have sworn.”

“Well, I’m not.”

“Are you nervous?”

“No!” I cross my arms tightly over my chest.

“It’s hard, I know. But you’ll be all right.”

I go to sit beside her. “It’s just, I’ve never felt so . . . I mean, I think about getting a job at McDonald’s, and I worry that I won’t be able to work the cash register.”

“Oh, I think you could probably manage that.”

I check my watch, get up to look out the window again.

“He’s not due quite yet,” Lydia says. “Don’t worry. He won’t be late. He’s not the type.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean he cares. He pays attention. He’s not the type to disappoint.”

“Right. As opposed to the type I married.”

Lydia hesitates, then says, “I wonder if I might ask you something.”

I turn to face her. “Of course.”

“Did you think life would be easy all the time?”

“No!”

“Are you sure?”

A horn honks, and I jump up. “Here he is! I’ll see you later.”

“Good luck. And take your time, I’ll be here when Travis gets home. I’ll have him help me make dinner—he’s quite good at making meatballs.”

“Thank you. And Lydia?”

“Yes?”

“I really didn’t think it would be easy all the time. I just didn’t know how weak I was.”

“Well. That’s where you’re wrong.” She pulls her cardigan up higher over her shoulders, resettles her glasses on her nose. “You’ll see.”

K
INGS WAITS FOR
me while I fill out the application and have an interview. Then he takes me to a diner. He orders coffee; I order the cheeseburger platter deluxe.

“So?” he says.

“So, it was easy!” I shed my coat, toss it into the corner of the booth. I feel good. I feel great.

“I told you.”

“The woman who interviewed me looked like she was twelve.”

“Ah. The senior staff member, then.”

“They said they’d call as soon as
tomorrow
.”

“They could.”

“Maybe we’ll get a job doing something together!”

“I’m moving mattresses tomorrow. Warehouse.”

“Oh. Never mind.”

My burger is delivered, and I take a bite, then say around it, “I told my mother I’d go out with someone she knows.”

“Oh, yeah?”

“Yeah. I wanted to do something for her.”

“What about you? Is it something you want to do?”

I salt my french fries, eat one. Two. “Not really.”

“You might have a good time.”

I shrug, offer a fry to him, which he refuses. I wonder if he’s dieting. If he lost weight, he’d be a very attractive man. But I would miss something. I’ve grown accustomed to his size. It’s comforting to me.

“Your husband was an asshole,” King says suddenly.

I look up, stop chewing.

“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that.”

“It’s okay. It’s true.”

“It’s hard to hear criticism about someone you love, though. I know that.”

I start to say I never really loved David, then don’t.

I
N THE CAR
on the way home, I tell King, “I feel so comfortable with you.”

“Yes.”

“I mean, from the very beginning, I felt as though we were friends.” I shiver a little. The car is cold.

He turns up the heat, reaches behind him for a blanket, tosses it on my lap. “Me too.” And then, “You know, I’ve just started to date out of the personals. So don’t feel bad about your mother fixing you up.”

“Really? Have you had good experiences?”

“Mostly, I’m too fat.” It is mild, without rancor, the way he says it. “I tell them on the phone that I’m heavy, they usually say it’s no problem, but then I show up and most of the time they get that look. You know? That look?”

“So what do you do?”

He shrugs. “I tell them never mind. I say it’s okay. I go home and read, or go to the movie by myself.”

“Well, they’re . . . They ought to give you a chance.”

“Yeah,” King says, smiling, and suddenly I see him as a little boy, home from school, innocent and hungry, holding pulpy papers in his hand that he will offer up to his mother. And then he is himself again, pulling into my driveway. “Here you are.”

“Thank you,” I say.

“Thank
you
.”

I laugh. “For what?”

“I don’t know.”

I open the car door, and he says, “Well, I
do
know.” I wait, expectantly, and he says, “I’ll tell you another time.”

12

E
ARLY
S
ATURDAY MORNING
, L
YDIA AND
I
ARE SITTING AT THE
breakfast table looking through the personals ads. We’re seeing if anyone looks better than the blind date I have set up with Jonathan for tonight. “Here’s one,” Lydia says, squinting at the tiny print. “He’s forty-three, he’s financially secure, he likes dining out, travel, and walks along the beach.”

“Oh, they all say that. Honest to God. Read a few more. They will all say that. What I want to know is, when I go to the beach how come I don’t see hundreds of available men walking up and down looking for women? You know, expensive sweaters wrapped around their shoulders, airline tickets in their pockets?”

“Well, of course it
is
almost winter.”

“I know, but even in summer I never see any.”

Lydia considers this, frowning, fingering the handle on her teacup. “I’ll bet there were some available men there. You probably just weren’t really looking.”

“No,” I say. “They weren’t there. There were just families yelling at their kids not to drown and teenagers walking around like billboards, acting as if their bodies would never change. They’re so oblivious to the fact that they’ll get older. Sometimes I want to grab them and say, ‘Hey! I used to look just like you! Haha-HA!!’ ”

“Yes,” Lydia says. “That’s what I want to say to you sometimes.” She sips her tea.

My God. Of course that must be true. Of course it must! What’s a little cellulite next to a face full of deep wrinkles? What’s a face full of deep wrinkles next to infirmity? When does the time come when you stand in front of your grown-up woman’s mirror and feel contentment for what you see? Ever?

“Well now, look at
this,
” Lydia says, pointing to the ads. “This really does sound good—he’s an artist—a painter; he has season tickets to the ballet; he likes big dogs. Oh, but he’s a much older gentleman. He’s more for me.”

“You don’t need anyone,” I say ruefully. Lydia is wearing a gift from Thomas: an ultra-soft, navy blue robe with a thin line ofred trim. In the pocket of the robe had been a folded-up sonnet about sleep, one of Thomas’s favorites that he had copied out for Lydia in his tall, back-slanted script.

“I know,” Lydia says, smiling. “In fact . . .”

“What?”

“Well, maybe I shouldn’t say this yet. I’m not absolutely certain, after all. But Thomas and I are thinking about getting married.”

I sit back in my chair, wordless. I see Lydia at the altar, her veil being lifted. And there is Thomas, his face illuminated with love and hope, bending down to kiss her.

“What do you think?” Lydia asks.

“Well, I . . .”
What about me???
“I think it’s wonderful, Lydia. I just . . . That’s really wonderful! When?”

“Well, at first we thought June, of course. But then, considering our ages, Thomas thought maybe we’d better just go ahead and do it as soon as possible.” She looks meaningfully over the top of her glasses at me.

“So. You’ll be moving out, then.”

“Yes, I’ll be moving into his place.”

Damn. I’ll have to find another roommate. I recall seeing a sign only yesterday on the bulletin board at a bookstore:
FEMALE COL
LEGE STUDENT SEEKS ROOM. CAN TEACH JAPANESE
. At the time, I’d thought idly of calling her, thinking it would be nice to have one more roommate; the heating bill has been much higher than I thought it would be. Now I think I’d better go to the bookstore as soon as it opens this morning and get the number, have the woman over for an interview right away. It might be nice, having a young Japanese woman around. That black hair, that soft voice. I am making terrible assumptions, I know, I am possibly even being racist, but I can’t help it. The woman will sit at the kitchen table in a beautiful turquoise kimono, cut an orange into six even slices.

And then I look over at Lydia and my fantasy dissolves into regret. I have loved sharing a house with her. I like it when she sits at the kitchen table slowly folding towels while I make dinner. I like seeing the strip of light coming from under her door when I go to bed at night; it makes me, however irrationally, feel safe. We occasionally watch old black-and-white movies together late at night, sighing with equal implausibility over young Robert Mitchum, over Clark Gable. We have begun to talk like girlfriends, to reveal the small and intimate things that one collects like cards for a good hand on the way to forging a real friendship. I know that Lydia likes pea soup with the ham bone in, gin rummy, the jolting thrill of cold sheets at night, a certain brand of outrageously expensive cold cream that comes in a frosted glass jar with a pink top. She will wear only silk slips. In some ways, in such a short length of time, Lydia has become a better friend to me than Rita. But now she is going to leave. I try smiling, but I feel terrible. Abandoned again. Perhaps this will be a condition, like anemia: Chronic Abandonment.

“It won’t be for a while, Sam. I want to give you at least a month’s notice. And as I said, I’m really not completely sure, yet.”

“Well, why wouldn’t you do it?” I ask. The phone rings, and I ignore it.

“Why wouldn’t I? Oh, I don’t know. I kind of like my independence. And to tell you the truth, I’ve really enjoyed living here with you. I feel as though I’ve gotten younger, in a way. And I adore Travis—we’ve become real pals.”

“I know,” I say. Travis has been teaching Lydia to play his latest computer game. Last night, jealous, I stood in the hallway with the laundry basket on my hip, peeking into Travis’s bedroom. I saw Lydia sitting beside Travis, listening to him tell her things he had never told me. The only thing he has told me recently is that Lydia’s bird recognizes him, calls him by name whenever he speaks to it, whereas every time I say anything to it, the bird falls silent. I can’t imagine a parakeet saying, “Travis,” but never mind.

I go over to the sink, rinse out my cup. “I do wonder,” Lydia says, “if getting married at my age isn’t awfully foolish.”

“I don’t think so,” I say. “And I hope if you have a wedding, I’ll be invited.”

“Oh, of course. You and Travis. And that King fellow, I’d like him to come, too. Very pleasant man. And a wonderful cook.”

True. On a few occasions now, King has made dinner for all of us. He never measured anything, always succeeded in making something we all, even Travis, liked. Last time, King presented us with chicken roasted with some exotic herbal combination, tiny new potatoes, green beans, and a chocolate mousse pie we had all marveled at.

“You could make this,” King told me that night, watching me eat a huge second piece. “I’ll teach you.” He tells me that all the time, that I can do things. Sometimes I want to say, “It’s all right. You don’t have to say that. I’m not so sad today.” But I never do. Instead, I save his confidence in me as though his words were silver dollars, knotted in a silk scarfand kept hidden in a dresser drawer.

Travis comes into the kitchen, still sleepy-looking at ten-thirty, and heads for the cereal cabinet. “Can Mike Oberlin come over today?” He squats down to reach for Cheerios, his back to me. He needs a haircut; his pajamas are wrinkled; between the bottoms and top I can see his winter-white skin. He reminds me at this moment of a bird newly hatched from the shell. Were he younger, I would pull him onto my lap and hug him, bury my nose in his neck to breathe in the rich scent of child-sleep. Instead, I set out the milk for him, get him a bowl and a spoon, tell him of course Mike can come over. I relish these small returns to normality. I’ll be wonderful to Mike. “Wow, your mom’s cool,” Mike will say, lying on Travis’s bed with his shoes on, about which I will say nothing, not one word. “Yeah, I guess,” Travis will answer, full of pride.

Travis fixes his cereal, then heads for the family room and the television. He’ll turn on MTV, I know, and I feel the usual stab of regret that he’s not watching
Sky King
or
Fury
instead of women’s breasts shoved into leather brassieres, ravaged-looking young men howling out sociopathic lyrics while they walk around sets that look like Armageddon. I’ve decided to let Travis watch occasionally instead of making it more alluring by disallowing it. Anyway, as he has repeatedly pointed out, everyone else watches it. He
has
to. When he told me that, I imagined him sitting in the lunchroom at school with other boys who were discussing the latest videos. “You see Madonna air-humping?” I imagined one boy saying, and Travis answering, “Yeah!” and giving the thumbs-up sign. This depressed me, so I revised the scene to have Travis respond by saying, “Air-humping? What’s that?” and then finishing the lunch I made him, all of it.

Lydia folds the personals, drinks the last of her tea. “I’d better get moving. Katherine and I are going over to the mall to do a little shopping.” She goes to the sink to wash her cup, dries it, and puts it back in the cupboard. I put my mug in the dishwasher, then go to pick up the message on the machine. It is Jonathan, confirming our date for the evening, telling me that the restaurant he decided on is pretty fancy, just so I know what to wear. I hate this.

I call King, leave him a message telling him what time to come over. He’s going to baby-sit for Travis—Lydia won’t be home and David is out of town on business. Probably not alone.

“Dad has a girlfriend,” Travis told me, last time he came back from spending the weekend with David.

“Really?” I asked, and Travis nodded.

“Did you meet her?”

“Yeah. That’s how I know.”

“What’s she like?”

He shrugged. “I don’t know.”

“Well, what does she
look
like?” I asked, to which Travis again replied, “I don’t know,” in an irritatingly dreamy voice that made me feel like shaking him.

“Does she have blond hair?”

He thought for a moment, then said, “Red. It’s long.”

“Uh-huh,” I said. “Well, that’s all right. It’s all right, don’t you think? For him to have a girlfriend?”

Travis didn’t answer. And I didn’t ask any more questions.