Open House (9 page)

13

A
T FIVE IN THE AFTERNOON
, I
HEAD FOR
T
RAVIS
’
S ROOM TO
tell him it’s time for Mike’s mother to come, they’d better wait downstairs, she’d called saying she was in a hurry. Outside the door, I hear the sound of muffled giggling. I smile, wait. I want to eavesdrop a little. Sometimes I write down the good stuffin a journal I’ve been keeping since Travis was born.

Apparently they are on the phone with someone. “Tell her you’ll meet her at the movie,” Travis says, and I hear Mike say, “Okay, so why don’t I meet you right outside the movie. Seven o’clock tonight.” He hangs up and the boys begin giggling louder.

Oh, what is this?
I think.
They’re too young for dating!
Then I hear Travis say, “How long do you think she’ll wait?”

“Probably about five hundred hours,” Mike says. They laugh again, louder, little hyenas; and I understand that Mike has no intention of going, that whoever the girl is will be standing there, holding her plastic purse and not looking around anymore after a while, just standing there. I push the door open, announce brusquely to Mike that his mother is coming, he should get downstairs and wait for her. Then, pointing to a Baggie full of chocolate-chip cookies, “Are those the cookies I made?”

“Yeah.” His collar is turned up in the back and I want to stomp forward and turn it down. Hard.

“Give them back to me,” I say.

“Mom!”
Travis yells.

“Sorry. I need them.”

Mike hands me the bag. He looks quickly at Travis, then away. He will tell his mother on me, no doubt. “You know Mrs. Morrow?” he’ll say, “the one whose husband dumped her? She’s nuts now.” Well, the hell with him. The hell with his mother.

Later, I will make Travis call that little girl back and set her straight. Then I’ll tell him that he’d better learn some things about how to treat girls, starting right now. I can’t wait to give him this lecture. If he interrupts me, I will take away MTV from him for one hundred years. And what a pleasant century it will be.

“W
HOA
! Y
OU LOOK
great,
” King says, when I open the door.

“Well,” I say. “Thank you.” I am wearing a cobalt blue dress, belted tightly at the waist. It’s short, shows off my legs, and the color has always been good for me. I do look nice, even if the weight I’ve gained recently is making the belt feel like a pretty instrument of torture. I have makeup on for the first time in weeks, and I’ve fancied up my hair with hot rollers. Joy is at each of my pulse points.

King, dressed in a gray sweat outfit, is carrying two videos. “
Terminator One
and
Two,
” he says, “do you mind?”

“I don’t care what he watches. I’m mad at him.”

“How come?”

“Oh . . . long story,” I say, and look away. Because the truth is, I realize now, I overreacted. I don’t know all the circumstances. Maybe the boys had some legitimate complaint against this girl. Maybe she had done something really terrible to them. But if so, they could have handled it another way. It’s David I was punishing, not them.

“Where are you going tonight?” King asks.

“Oh, out to dinner, some fancy place. I don’t want to go. I’m a nervous wreck. This feels so silly.
Dating
. What a dumb word!”

“You’ll relax after you meet him. It’s hard, this part, the part right before they ring the bell. Doesn’t feel great to be on the other side of the door either, take it from me. Why don’t you come and sit down with me.”

I follow him into the kitchen, sit at the table opposite him. It feels so strange, sitting in this homiest of places wearing heels and sheer-to-the-waist panty hose, and a dress I have to be careful not to spill on. I hope there’s nothing smeared on the seat of the chair, making a mark to which my date will point later, saying, “There’s, uh . . . I believe there’s something on your dress.”

The kitchen light is such a nice yellow when it’s dark out like this. It’s so cozy. Why can’t I just stay home, change into my own sweatpants, and watch movies with the boys, make some popcorn drenched with butter, loaded with salt? Why do I have to walk around outside in high heels, feeling the bitter November wind at my ankles as though it is sniffing them, asking
Are you crazy? Why
don’t you have socks on?
It’s supposed to flurry tonight, maybe it could get bad. I’d better stay home.

“I’ll bet I know what you’re thinking,” King says.

“What?”

“You’re thinking of what you could possibly do to stay home.”

“I am not.”

“Listen, forget about it. Stop thinking about what might happen. Just sit here and let’s talk. About anything.”

“Okay.” I fold my hands before me, try to think of something to say. My mind is absolutely blank. I am an imbecile. When my date tries to make conversation with me, I will only smile vacantly, like a Kewpie doll with feathers sticking out of her brain.

Finally, King says, “So. Got any job prospects for Monday?”

“Oh! I’m glad you said that, I meant to tell you. They did call me. I can have my choice—Laundromat attendant or receptionist. For a whole week!”

“Take the Laundromat thing.”

“You’re kidding.”

“No.”

“But isn’t that kind of . . . humiliating?”

He smiles. “Why?”

“I don’t know. Have you done it?”

“No, but I would. I like those kinds of jobs.”

I nod, then say gently, “Didn’t you ever think maybe you’d like to go to college, you know, get a good education, some great job?”

“I went to college.”

“Oh, I’m sorry. I just assumed . . .”

“It’s okay.”

“Where did you go?” I ask casually. I’ll need to be careful, tell him without seeming insincere that it doesn’t make any difference, really, where you go to school.

“MIT,” he says, and then, “do you have any popcorn?”

I point to the cupboard over the refrigerator. “MIT?”

“Yeah.”

“The Massachusetts Institute of Technology?”

“Yeah.” He pulls down a package of popcorn, brings it over to the microwave.

“What did you study?”

“Astrophysics.”

“And did you finish?”

“Sure.”

“So . . . why do you walk dogs?”

He turns around to look at me. “I like it.”

Travis comes into the kitchen, sits down at the kitchen table. “Hi, King,” he says pleasantly. This is so when he’s nasty to me it will have a better effect.

“Hi, Travis,” King says. “Want some popcorn?”

“Sure!” He stares sullenly at me. I stare back, then make a face at him. I’m good at this. I used to sit at the kitchen table with Louise, fighting silently behind our mother’s back. Oh, the venomous stares we mastered, the contemptuous fury we could communicate in a split second’s time.

The doorbell sounds and I start so hugely my hands fly apart.

“Mom!”
Travis says.

I am going to throw up, right now.

“I’ll get it,” Travis says. And then, from the hallway, he yells, “Mom! It’s that guy for you. He has
flowers
!”

Oh God, I think.

I look helplessly at King.

“Well,” he says, “where do you keep the vases?”

14

W
HEN
J
ONATHAN AND
I
ENTER THE RESTAURANT
, I
HEAR A
piano playing softly. In the far corner, I see a smallish black man, dressed in a tuxedo and a crooked black bow tie, seated behind a baby grand. He is older, his hair gray, his face lined. He is smiling—sadly, I believe—and playing elegant background music. He sees me staring and nods at me. “I know,” I feel like telling him. “I don’t want to be here either. Let’s go somewhere I can wear jeans and you can play what you want.”

“Two, for eight o’clock,” Jonathan tells the maître d’, who looks as though he has been stuffed into his suit. Were he not so smuglooking, I would feel sorry for him. “Certainly, Mr. Schaefer,” the man says, checking a name off in a cream-colored register. “Right this way.”

Oh, fine.
Mr. Schaefer
. Jonathan’s been here a hundred times. No wonder he’s perfectly relaxed. I never saw the point in going out to fancy restaurants. It’s not that I don’t appreciate good food; I love good food. But why go to all this trouble? Why put on fancy clothes to eat?

I follow the maître d’ to the table, Jonathan close behind me. I don’t like having him so close behind me. Probably hairpins are sticking out of my French twist. I could have runs in the back of my nylons; I forgot to check. I have never learned to walk quite right in heels; I always wobble. I have never liked dressing up for any reason and I will never, ever do this again. It’s my life.

Plus I hate Jonathan. Who can’t even be honest enough to spell his name with an
H
. Stupid prep school name. The name of a man who walks around flinging his hair back off his forehead, talking endlessly about sailing.

When my chair is pulled out for me with a flourish, I sit down, furious. What is the point of all this formality? Why should my chair be pulled out for me? Do I look incapable of pulling a chair out for myself? Why doesn’t the maître d’ pull the chair out for
Jon
athan? Why must it always be the women doing these circus tricks? And then, watching the maître d’ pull the chair out for Jonathan, I think,
Oh. Never mind
.

Well, here we are. Only a couple more hours to go. I smile tightly at Jonathan, then at the white-coated waiter, who has glided smoothly as a swan to my side. I know his type. He will pour coffee starting low and then let his arm rise up spectacularly high, as though the stream should be roughly comparable to Niagara Falls. And he will sneak up on us, using ridiculous silver tongs to place sculpted pieces of butter on our bread plates. And everything he does will be done with an air of distant disapproval.

“Good evening,” he says, and I jump.

“Oh!—Good evening,” I say, and wish so much that I were at home, asleep.

“Would you care for a cocktail?” the waiter asks.

Would I care for a cocktail? I would care for about ninety cocktails. “Yes, a glass of white wine, please,” I say. I hate white wine. I like red wine. Out of jelly glasses, like the gangsters in movies. But I think it might be wrong, red wine. Lightning-fast, the waiter recites a list of choices for white wine. Show-off. “I’ll have the first one,” I say. “The first one you said.”

The waiter nods, turns to Jonathan. “A gin martini,” Jonathan says. “Bombay Sapphire. Extra dry, extra cold. Two olives. Straight up.”

“Very good, sir.”

“Excuse me,” I say, and when the waiter turns to me, I tell him, “I’d like to change my order to what he’s having.”

“Certainly.”

“Sorry.”

“It’s quite all right.” He glides away.

I smile at Jonathan. “So!” I clear my throat, look down at my purse. What’s in here? A lipstick, some tissues. A few bucks.

“Are you nervous?” Jonathan asks.

I look up quickly, laugh, and then, to my absolute horror, snort.

Tomorrow I will kill my mother.

“Me too,” Jonathan says.

“Pardon?”

“I’m nervous, too.”

“No, you’re not.”

He smiles. “I assure you, I am. I’m just sneaky about it.”

“So do you . . . what makes you think
I’m
nervous? Is that why you asked that question? Because you think I am? Nervous?”

“It’ll get better in a few minutes,” Jonathan says. “Honest.”

“Right.” I lean forward a little, try to relax my hands, which have been clutching each other, rigor-mortis style.

He is handsome, there’s no doubt about that. I wish I could freeze time so that I could stare at him for as long as I want. Thus far, I have taken polite little looks. He is blond, his hair nicely streaked; his eyes a deep blue. He wears a pair of tortoiseshell glasses that I like very much. He is tall, slim. What the hell is the matter with him that he has to have blind dates?

Our drinks are delivered and we both take a sip. I lean back in my chair.

“See?” Jonathan says. “It’s better already, isn’t it?”

“Yes. It is.” Inside my pointy shoes, my toes uncurl.

I
T IS OVER DESSERT
that Jonathan brings up Veronica. “According to my father, she’s quite an extraordinary woman.”

“Oh,
yes,
” I say. “She really is.” I take another bite of crème brûlée. It is delicious. It is so delicious! It makes me happy, the rough burnt-sugar surface, the smooth insides. Maybe I’ll have another one. If I can have two martinis, I can have two desserts. The silver spoon I’m using is so elegant, so
right
. Look at these thick linen tablecloths, these lovely ivory-colored candles with their gentle, flickering flames, their flattering glow. I should go back to Tiffany’s and get some candleholders. I was right, when David first left, to want to live this way. This is the way to live.

I take another bite, rub my tongue against the roof of my mouth. It feels wonderful. I look at Jonathan’s mouth. Sexy. Deep inside me, a pleasant stirring. I want to kiss him. Oh, I want to kiss him. Later, I will kiss him.

Or now.

I stand up, go over to his side of the table. “I just want to do something,” I say. I bend down and kiss him lightly on the mouth. Then I go back to my side of the table.

“There,” I say.

“Well, thank you,” he says. “That was nice.” And then, “Are you . . . all right?”

“I’m
fine
.” I sigh, rest my head in my hand. I wonder where my shoes are. Well, they couldn’t have gone too far.

“I’m afraid we’ve had a bit too much to drink,” he says, but his voice is kind, and rich, and he makes our overindulgence sound stylish.

“Yes,” I say. “We certainly have.”

“I don’t usually—”

“Oh, me either!” What friends we are, able so soon to complete each other’s sentences!

“You know, Jonathan,” I say, “you are a very good-looking man.
And:
I would like to kiss you again.”

“Well,” he says. “Likewise.”

“Should we do it here? Or should we go and make out in the car with the heater turned up?” I am quite pleased with my forwardness. This is really very good for me. I need to do more of this, yes, I do.

“Why don’t I get the check,” he says.

Oh, he’s paying. What a wonderful, wonderful man. So . . . Gregory Peckish. I feel for my shoes, slide into them, and then stand, only a bit unsteadily. “I’ll just go to the bathroom,” I tell him.

I should have said “powder room.” That would evoke the image of me sitting before a beautiful gold mirror, a vase of fresh flowers nearby, freshening my makeup, rather than sitting on a toilet. “Just want to powder my nose,” I add, lightly touching his shoulder as I pass by him. There. All fixed. See? Life is easy. Full of choices and quick remedies, if only you look. There’s no reason in the world to mourn one relationship when another is so easy to find. Why, Jonathan is reading the same book as I am!

After I use the toilet, I stand before the mirror, put on lipstick, then blot it. I arrange my hair with my fingers, pull down on a strand to make it rest near one eye. I put on a little more eyeliner. Then a touch more blush.

I have always been a champion kisser, and I have a feeling Jonathan is, too. I can’t wait to get back to him. I am a woman in my forties, and I know what’s up. I can do whatever I want. I take in a deep breath, straighten my belt, head back to the table. This urge is growing stronger and stronger. Well, good. It’s good. I’d thought I was broken. I’m not broken. I am an attractive woman, out with my new friend Jonathan, who is a very attractive man. My mother is quite good at this fixing-up business, I will thank her; yes, I will send her a pretty little bouquet and on the card will be
“Thanks.”

No. More.

On the card will be,
“You were absolutely right.”

No. Not that much.

Well,
something
will be on the card to tell my mother what a good matchmaker she turned out to be. Maybe I’ll call Stuart Gardner, that guy who called before, the other one my mother recommended. Maybe I’ll just be a dating fool, have a stable of studs. A blond, a brunet, and a redhead. None of them with male-pattern baldness. None of them on Viagra.

When I arrive back at the table, Jonathan looks up at me. “Ready?”

“Oh, yes,” I say. “Yup.”

O
F COURSE
we do not make out in the car. We make out in his bed. I am in my forties and so is he, and we have admitted to each other that we have in our lifetimes had our share of back trouble. And so here I am lying on the bottom, and here he is lying on the top, and he is kissing me and I could not be more content. On the weekends when David has Travis, I will live here, and Jonathan will bring me champagne when I lounge in the tub after we make love. He will bring me champagne with a strawberry floating in it, and he will read to me from a book of poetry by Pablo Neruda.

He unzips my dress and I panic for a moment, wondering about the state of my bra; then remember that it’s a push-up, a nice one, and I am eager for him to see it. It’s got lots of lace.

I feel him pulling my dress down slightly. Then he stops, kisses my neck to make for a pleasingly painful pause. The man is a master. I should pay him.

He pulls my dress down farther, kisses my collarbones, moves down, stops just above my breasts. I pull lightly on his hair, inadvertently moan. He pulls my dress down to my waist and kisses my breasts through my bra. And now, finally, there are his smart fingers undoing my bra and his mouth at last on my bare skin. He runs his hand up my thigh, and I think I might burst with lust. And then, somehow, my bra is over my face, the underwire poking into my right eye.

“Hold on,” I say, laughing, and start to pull away.

“Oh, no,” he groans.
“Don’t.”

“No, I just want to . . . wait a second.” What I’ll do is just take everything off. Well, maybe not everything. No. Everything.

But he is squeezing me tightly, holding me down, kissing me harder than before. It is not entirely unpleasant. But then, suddenly, it is.

“Jonathan,” I say.
“Wait a minute!”

He pulls back, his eyes narrowed. “What the fuck is this? You want it just as much as I do.”

I breathe out an astonished laugh, feel myself descend with a lurch into instant sobriety. “I just . . .”

“Forget it. The hell with it.” He sits up at the edge of the bed, turns on the light. I regret that his clothes are still on, while I am in a state of undress that is sexy no more. No, not anymore. I pull down my bra, fasten it, sit up, and pull my dress onto my shoulders. With some difficulty, I zip it.

Jonathan takes one sharp look at me, then looks away. He pulls a pack of cigarettes out of the bedside-stand drawer, lights one.

“You
smoke
?” I say, and the whole, whole card house falls down, down, down.

O
UTSIDE
, I
LOOK
up at the night sky, blink back tears. It’s too cold to cry. It’s clear, the moon full, the stars like pinholes in black velvet. On the lawns I walk past are the reaching patterns of moon shadows, cast by the bare limbs of trees. I walk carefully, slipping often. “Goddamn men,” I say, out loud. “They’re all pigs. All of them.”

But Travis. He won’t be a pig. I’ll make sure of it. I may not ever contribute much to this world, but the one thing I will do is make sure Travis is a gentleman. A gentle man. I am going to start paying very, very close attention to him, and shape him so that he will come out like a gay man, but be straight. Unless of course he wants to be gay. But it doesn’t look good for that. Signs of inattentiveness and carelessness abound.

I slip again, and this time fall gracelessly onto my side. My purse slides a few feet ahead of me, then stops as though it is looking back, playing a game. I start to get up, but then instead turn onto my back. It’s not so bad, here on the sidewalk. It’s restful. I move my arms and legs, checking for pain. Nothing terribly wrong—nothing broken, anyway. The door to a nearby house opens. I see a yellow rectangle of light, then the silhouette of a woman in a bathrobe leaning out. “Hello?” she calls. “Are you all right? Miss?”

I struggle to my feet. “I’m fine,” I say.
Liar
. “I just fell.”

“I
saw
. My
goodness
!”

“Well, it’s slippery, you know! You’d fall too, if you were out here wearing three-inch heels!”

The woman closes the door.

Oh, I hadn’t meant to sound so defensive. I should have been nicer, asked the woman to use her phone to call a cab. I brush snow off my coat—funny, I’m not so cold now—and continue walking.

A car slows down, and I quicken my step. It is Jonathan, come to beg forgiveness. Well, he is not forgiven. Then the car pulls over, and I see that it is not Jonathan, it is a bunch of teenage boys. The window rolls down and the boy riding shotgun leans out, starts to say something. Then, seeing me more clearly, he says nothing, rolls the window back up, and the car drives away.

Pigs
.

When I finally arrive home, I let myself in the back door, go into the kitchen, and upend the vase of roses Jonathan brought me into the garbage. Red for romance. Right.

“Hello?” King calls. He comes into the kitchen and leans against the doorjamb, watching me. I rinse the vase out, shove it back into the cupboard.