Some Other Town (21 page)

We are none of us fooled here of course. Especially not MaryBeth. As they pass my office, she laughs at something Dr. Steinem has just said—something about the Project, how very well lately he thinks we've been doing, how our grant money just keeps on doubling—and I get the feeling then she is laughing at the Project itself, at Dr. Steinem too. The Personality does not care what anyone here thinks, you can tell.

As I've said, she is a dangerous person. Smart too, in her way—well, wily. And I think now she is onto us here at the Project, onto our secret as well. Something has tipped her off. And now that she's here for her visit, sooner or later she'll get around to it. To our secret, that is, about our readers. To our catalog and first fall series that she mentioned on the phone to Frances. The
Personality knows only our vocabulary lists, the ones she reads for our tapes. She has no experience with our readers. But the Personality is not one merely to assume, as do others when they hear we write readers, that what we do here is actually turn out books. And now the Personality wants to see proof. Or at the very least, proofs.

So it appears it's time to lay a few more cards on the table. About our little secret, I mean. It's not only, as I've said, that we all of us here are inept. We are, it is true, but in fact there are some of us who are worse. Who have decided that rather than let our deficiencies run the Project entirely to ground, have instead taken things into our own hands. Have guaranteed in effect that no one need know the truth, no one need see even one woeful word of our inadequate little readers, or at least for as long as possible. Who have committed, therefore, not so much an error, as an error of gaping omission.

Well one of us anyway. Me.

To explain: When it became clear to the editors, well except for Celeste, that their stories were unacceptable, but they shrugged and still they kept writing—offering in their defense that they were just doing their jobs, the actual publishing was out of their hands—I'm sorry to say I at once saw the way out for all of us. Publishing, that is to say printing, is not technically out of my hands, since as assistant editor of Project design, I am our sole contact with printers. It's a responsibility that has come in handy of late and also key to our secret, part two.

That is, I know our point here is to turn out readers, to turn out series of readers. I also know each editor at the Project needs her job and needs to write stories to keep it. But I have read the
editors' stories, board by stultifying board, and I know it would now be seriously wrong to take them any further. It would be wrong, for instance, to inflict them on children. Who might get the idea, or so I have reasoned, that life itself is like all those stories, when in fact it is not nearly so drab and drawn out or devoid of so very much meaning.

So partway into this year, I made a decision, with which the editors, minus Celeste, all agreed: Although the Project had promised to publish its series in time for the looming new school year, all our imaginative little tales of make-believe would instead remain just that—make-believe. We would have no inaugural fall release.

To this end, I have not sent one thing to a printer. Rather, as I finish each of the stories' boards, I just place it on top of its predecessor, in a pile I keep hidden behind my suite door. Which goes for the catalog boards as well, which are not even yet fully inked. It is a risk, all right, but one I am willing to shoulder. For the good of the children. For the good of the Project. For our continued gainful employment. For as long as I can get away with it.

And to date, oddly enough, it's worked out. Steinem, besotted and longing for MaryBeth as he's been, has not checked our work all year. The grantors as well do not seem concerned that we have nothing to show for ourselves. We are a publisher that only pretends to publish—a big secret as far as the reading world goes and you would think a hard one to keep. But for two years now the Project has produced not one book, and so far no one seems to have noticed.

However, here is the catch. In the last month or so, I have myself felt a growing impatience, with the Project or myself I
cannot yet say. I just know that some days I am tired of the pretending, the fooling, and all of the hiding.

Which in the beginning, I admit, I did not consider a problem. I have never been much of an employee. I have never, truth be told, much tried. But with so many days at loose ends, with so many work hours to fill, I find I look now only for diversion. I do less and less paste-up, I'm behind on my boards. My mind strays at every opportunity. I'm growing forgetful, I have twice left the hot wax plugged in over night, I have left the caps off my markers. The fact is, I'm beginning to lose interest in general here. There is, after all, only so long a person can hoodwink.

But then some days I think it is more. There are days now this spring, when I stare at the glow of my light table, that I find I am called away. And when I look up to see where it is I have gone to, I find a strange sad new distance to things. It is as though there on a fault line directly beneath me, life gives a tremendous jolt, wrenching apart into halves. And from where I remain then, dazed on the rim, I hardly recognize the other side. I'm left aching and rocking and holding myself with both arms. For months this is how it has gone.

I sit in my suite and shake my head hard once to clear it. But enough now of our little secret. The Personality, the Project, for that matter. Enough of these dreary thoughts of work and back to the sweet ones of Ben and me. With the Personality off
to her meeting with Steinem, I know there's still time for a few. Thoughts of Ben and the farm and the hiking, all that. But also our starry nights. It is something I haven't yet got to. Those lovely fall nights in Ben's grass.

It did not of course begin with the nights or the grass. As I've said, for the first month that we were together, Ben Adams and I were just learning to be friends, the kind of vigilant friends you manage to be when one of you is married. But then came the day, or rather the night, when we were no longer just friends.

It began with one of my visits to Ben's to once again check on the crops. The day was warm, we lost track of the time, and stayed out in our furrows until dusk. Dinner ended up as leftover chicken, there was no time to barbecue that night. And then afterward, although we had finished late, Ben asked would I like to go look at the stars.

Now I happen to know the front room of Ben's house came with a big red telescope. I also know Ben sometimes sits behind it, staring out at the night through the window. It makes me think Ben's landlord did much the same, that he was a stargazer too, so I've no idea why he left his telescope. Maybe it was just a passing fancy of his, something to fill long farm winter nights. But I like to think it meant more. I like to picture the landlord there late at his window, searching the stars, bedazzled. That it was not all just earth he was tied to.

But tonight Ben is not thinking of his landlord or what it might be that beguiles him. He says only who needs a telescope, Margaret? The evening is clear, for October warm, and would I like just to go out and look up?

Ben is excited, he has in mind a show-and-tell, I can tell. Ben
knows a lot about stars. And so I say well sure Ben, OK, although in fact what I'm thinking is how late it's become, that it will not be so easy now driving back home. The road from Ben's is rutty and dark with sharp curves hard to see even by day. Still, “Sure Ben,” I say, and try to sound like I think it's a wonderful idea.

It turns out then in fact it is. Because when I follow Ben out his front door, incredibly there they all are, thousands of stars, making the whole night glimmer. Well who knew there could be so many stars? It is not like this in town, I tell Ben. We have stars there, yes, but they are only the usual few town stars, diffused and standoffish, stuffy. But here out at Ben's the country stars shine, exuberant and free and, well, startling.

Ben walks a little before me, an old army blanket under his arm. He is headed for the farmyard's front bank. “Here, Margaret,” he calls. And I can tell Ben has done this before, this is where he comes nights to watch the whole sky on his own.

He sits down and leans back on both elbows, so I do the same. And then pointing up, “Look, Margaret. Cassiopeia!” Ben says, as though she is some old friend of us both and how happy we are to see her.

“Cassiopeia?” I say, and peer hard at where Ben is pointing, as though I know what it is I am looking for. And I realize right there I need to stop Ben. I do not know my stars, I am not a tracker of constellations. Ben should understand this.

He does of course. It is why he has brought me out here. But I am saved then from a lecture on Cassiopeia the Queen and the stars that make up her throne, also why she occasionally chooses to hang from it upside down, because just then a night breeze blows over Ben's farm and sends a little tremor through me.

Ben does not miss my shivering, nor the fact it is late, that the temperature has dropped considerably. “Cold, Margaret?” he says, and looks at me, then doesn't wait while I pretend I am not.

Rolling onto his side, Ben reaches on past me, and pulling the far edge of the blanket, wraps it back over us both. We lie close in now, Ben's head next to mine. The blanket feels warm and I smile. I look at Ben, he smiles as well. “Good, Ben,” I am going to say. “The blanket feels good.” But “Shh,” Ben says, putting his hand up to stop me. And then before anyone knows it, we are kissing.

Now here is something I have learned about kissing: Scientifically speaking, it is directly proportional to proximity. I read this once in a social psychologist's report, although of course it's not really news, or the psychologist's point, considering the range of most lips. The psychologist's point was that something more causal is at play, that even without real emotion involved, proximity by itself can promote kissing. Actually, the psychologist did not say kissing exactly, what he said was intimacy, that proximity between people promotes intimacy. But really in my case it is kissing.

I have never been the same since that report. It has ruined perfectly fine moments with men I have known, or for that matter with men I did not know. Because since that psychologist's report, when I find myself physically close to some man, say when attending a crowded performance, if I make the mistake of turning to look at whoever is seated next to me, if he happens then to reach down at my side of his seat for his program that's just slipped to the floor, I am taken by an irrational, overwhelming urge to lean in and plant a kiss on him, often on the nearest ear.

But with Ben, it is more now than just that we're proximate. It is more than a passing stranger's ear. Because now we are
kissing and kissing and kissing. We cannot seem to stop kissing. And then touching and holding and rolling in close, then rolling up onto each other. Followed by even more kissing. It is surprising us both, I'm pretty sure. What is going on here under this blanket?

And now look at this. Things have taken yet a new turn. Ben is sliding his kisses down onto my neck, he is saying my name at the dip of my throat, “Margaret, Margaret,” over and over until it is almost a moan. And now moving his hands down the sides of my shirt, now under my shirt and onto my skin. Now down, down to my jeans.

I'm aware of only how close Ben is and how large and exciting and good. And also how surprisingly nice he smells, clean, something like rain. I lie still and feel Ben push up against me, feel the thrill of his body on mine. And my hands then reach out for him all on their own and fumble for his belt and belt buckle.

So that was our first night as more than just friends. After which, Ben and I stargazed a great deal. All fall, in fact, we could not either of us seem to wait for that time in the evening, after dessert and before one or the other of us took our leave, that one or the other of us would pause, then say well, here's an idea. Want to go look at the stars?

But now it is noon and the Personality is only too pleased to have lunch with us, she says. We are all too dear to give up our lunch
hour for her. She makes it sound as though that is what pleases her most, the sacrifice we have made for her.

But really, I think, what pleases her most is that so many of us have shown up, that we all seem to want to spend time with her. We do not, of course, tell her it's because Dr. Steinem asked us to. And besides, that is not the only reason. We are all curious about this woman. We would not for the world miss lunch. Although it will also be tricky, we know, spending so much time alone with her. We will need to keep her diverted, we will need to keep conversation light. We will need in particular to keep her off the topic of the Project's readers.

Because Dr. Steinem has asked that Celeste be our lead hostess today, she is the one to pick up the Personality at his office, to bring her back down the hall. The rest of us, however, are ready, we stand outside our doors waiting. And when we spot her then on the way toward us, we see she has put that shocking pink coat back on. She must think we are going out for our lunch, well she is in for a big disappointment.

But the Personality spots us then as well. She sees we are all out in the hall. And smiling and looking pleasantly surprised, she calls, “Oh, are we all going to lunch?” After which she tells us the part about how she is really, only too pleased.

Lola, who, as second lead hostess, has planned our lunch-hour itinerary, says oh no, it is our pleasure she is sure, and laughs loudly. Then she wedges in between the Personality and Celeste and taking the Personality's arm, says, “We all just wanted to get to know you, hon. We've heard so much about you.”

So then, Lola and Celeste take off with the Personality for the elevator and the rest of us follow. We all fit in, although we are
shoulder to shoulder. From the back, Frances grumbles that Sally Ann's purse is taking up too much room. She could for once leave Mr. Bones behind, he does not have to spend the whole lunch hour with us.