The Collected Stories of Deborah Eisenberg (43 page)

Frank is in the hospital with a ruptured appendix, her mother says; her face has a terrible jellylike look. If she could see her own face, Lynnie wonders, would it look like that?

There will be no more going to the stone house; she will be needed at home, her mother is saying, staring at Lynnie as though Lynnie were shrinking into a past of no meaning—the way a dying person might look at an enemy.

The next day, Lynnie seeks out Isobel in the lunchroom. “A ruptured appendix,” Isobel says. “That’s really dangerous, you know.”

“My mother says Frank is going to be all right,” Lynnie says doggedly.

“Poor Lynnie,” Isobel says. “So what are you going to do if Ross and Claire hire someone else?”

Lynnie puts her head down on the lunch table and closes her eyes. The sweet, unpleasant smell of the lunchroom rises up, and the din of the students, talking and laughing, folds around her.

“Poor Lynnie,” Isobel says again.

Later that week, Lynnie brings Isobel to the stone house. Claire makes coffee, and when she brings out a third tiny china cup, Lynnie is unable to hear anything for several seconds.

Ross comes in, whistling, and lets the door slam behind him. “What’s this?” he asks, indicating Isobel. “Invader or captive?”

“Friendly native,” Claire says. “Isobel’s going to be our new Lynnie.”

“What’s the matter with our old Lynnie?” Ross says. He looks at Isobel for a moment. “Our old Lynnie’s fine with me.”

“Oh, Ross.” Claire sighs. “I told you. Lynnie’s brother is sick.”

“Hmm,” Ross says.

“He’s in the hospital, Ross,” Claire says.

“Oh, God,” Ross says. “Yes, I’m sorry to hear that, Lynnie.”

“First day of the new semester,” Claire says to Lynnie. “He’s always disgusting the first day. How are your new students, my love?”

“Unspeakable,” Ross says.

“Truly,” Claire says. She smiles at Isobel.

“Worse than ever,” Ross says, taking a beer from the refrigerator. “There isn’t
one.
Well, one, maybe. A possibility. A real savage, but she has an interesting quality. Potential, at least.”

“I used to have potential,” Claire says, “but look at me now.”

Ross raises his beer to her. “Look at you now,” he says.

Ross holds the door as Lynnie and Isobel leave. “I’ve seen you in town,” he says to Isobel. “You’re older than I thought.”

She glances up at him and then turns back to Claire. “Goodbye,” she says. “See you soon.”

“See you soon,” Claire says, coming to join them at the door. “I do appreciate this. I’m going to have another baby, and I want to get in as much painting as I can first.”

“You’re going to have another baby?” Lynnie says, staring.

“We’re going to have hundreds of babies,” Ross says, putting his arms around Claire from behind. “We’re going to have hundreds and hundreds of babies.”

Afterward, Lynnie would become heavy and slow whenever she even thought of the time when Frank was sick. Their room was desolate while he was in the hospital; when he returned she felt how cramped it had always been before. Frank was testy all the time then, and cried easily. Her family deserved their troubles, she thought. Other people looked down on them, looked down and looked down, and then when they got tired of it they went back to their own business. But her family—and she—were the same whether anyone was looking or not.

Isobel’s mother stops Lynnie on the sidewalk to ask after Frank. The special, kind voice she uses makes Lynnie’s skin jump now. How could she ever have thought she adored Isobel’s mother, Lynnie wonders, shuddering with an old, sugared hatred.

At night Lynnie can see Isobel in her room, brushing her hair, or sometimes, even, curled up against her big white pillows, reading. Has Isobel seen Ross and Claire that day? Lynnie always wonders. Did they talk about anything in particular? What did they do?

At school, Isobel sends her display of cheery waves and smiles in Lynnie’s direction, and it is as though Ross and Claire had never existed. But once in a while she and Isobel meet on the sidewalk, and then they stop to talk in their ordinary way, without any smiles or fuss at all. “Claire’s in a good mood,” Isobel tells Lynnie one afternoon. “She loves being pregnant.”

Pregnant.
What a word. “How’s Ross?” Lynnie says.

“He’s all right.” Isobel shrugs. “He’s got an assistant now, some student of his. Mary Katherine. She’s always around.”

Lynnie feels herself beginning to blush. “Don’t you like him?”

“I like him.” Isobel shrugs again. “He lends me books.”

“Oh.” Lynnie looks at Isobel wonderingly. “What books?” she says without thinking.

“Just books he tells me to read,” Isobel says.

“Oh,” Lynnie says.

It is spring when Lynnie returns to the stone house. She is hugged and exclaimed over, and Emily and Bo perform for her, but she looks around as though it were she who had just come out of a long illness. The big, smooth toys, the wonderful picture books no longer inspire her longing, or even her interest.

“We’ve missed you,” Claire says. Lynnie rests her head against the window frame, and the pale hills outside wobble.

But Claire has asked Isobel to sit for a portrait, so Isobel is at the stone house all the time now. The house is full of people—Lynnie upstairs with Emily and Bo, and Ross in his study with Mary Katherine, and Isobel and Claire in the big room among Claire’s canvases.

In the afternoons they all gather in the kitchen. Sometimes Mary Katherine’s boyfriend, Derek, joins them and watches Mary Katherine with large, mournful eyes while she smokes cigarette after cigarette and talks cleverly with Ross about his work. “Doesn’t he drive you crazy?” Mary Katherine says once to Claire. “He’s so opinionated.”

“Is he?” Claire says, smiling.

“Oh, Claire,” Mary Katherine says. “I wish I were like you. You’re
serene.
And you can
do
everything. You can paint, you can cook…”

“Claire can do everything,” Ross says. “Claire can paint, Claire can cook, Claire can fix a carburetor…”

“What a useful person to be married to,” Mary Katherine says.

Claire laughs, but Derek looks up at Mary Katherine unhappily.

“
I
can’t do anything,” Mary Katherine says. “I’m hopeless. Aren’t I, Ross?”

“Hopeless,” Ross says, and Lynnie’s eyes cloud mysteriously. “Truly hopeless.”

Now and again Ross asks Isobel’s opinion about something he has given her to read. She looks straight ahead as she answers, as though she were remembering, and Ross nods soberly. Once Lynnie sees Ross look at Mary Katherine during Isobel’s recitation. For a moment Mary Katherine looks back at him from narrow gray eyes, then makes her red mouth into an O from which blossoms a series of wavering smoke rings.

One day in April, when several students have dropped by, the temperature plummets and the sky turns into a white, billowing cloth that hides the trees and farmhouses. “We’d better go now,” one of the students says, “or we’ll be snowed in forever.”

“Can you give me and Lynnie a lift?” Isobel asks. “We’re on bikes.”

“Stay for the show,” Ross says to her. “It’s going to be sensational up here.”

“Coming?” the student says to Isobel. “Staying? Well, O.K., then.” Lynnie sees the student raise her eyebrows to Mary Katherine before, holding her coat closed, she goes out with her friends into the blowing wildness.

“We should go, too,” Derek says to Mary Katherine.

“Why?” Mary Katherine says. “We’ve got four-wheel drive.”

“Stick around,” Ross says. “If you feel like it.” Mary Katherine stares at him for a moment, but he goes to the door, squinting into the swarming snow where the students are disappearing. Behind him a silence has fallen.

“Yes,” Claire says suddenly. “Everybody stay. There’s plenty of food—we could live for months. Besides, I want to celebrate. I finished Isobel today.”

Isobel frowns. “You finished?”

“With your part, at least,” Claire says. “The rest I can do on my own. So you’re liberated. And we should have a magnificent ceremonial dinner, don’t you think, everybody? For the snow.” She stands, her hands together as though she has just clapped, looking at each of them in turn. Claire has a fever, Lynnie thinks.

“Why not?” Mary Katherine says. She closes her eyes. “We can give you two a ride home later, Isobel.”

Bo and Emily are put to bed, and Lynnie, Isobel, Ross, Claire, Mary Katherine, and Derek set about making dinner. Although night has come, the kitchen glimmers with the snow’s busy whiteness.

Ross opens a bottle of wine and everyone except Claire drinks. “This is delicious!” Lynnie says, dazed with happiness, and the others smile at her, as though she has said something original and charming.

Even when they must chop and measure, no one turns on the lights. Claire finds candles, and Lynnie holds her glass up near a flame. A clear patch of red shivers on the wall. “Feel,” Claire says, taking Lynnie’s hand and putting it against her hard, round stomach, and Lynnie feels the baby kick.

“Why are we whispering?” Ross whispers, and then laughs. Claire moves vaporously within the globe of smeary candlelight.

Claire and Derek make a fire in the huge fireplace while Ross gets out the heavy, deep-colored Mexican dishes and opens another bottle of wine. “Ross,” Claire says. But Ross fills the glasses again.

Lynnie wanders out into the big room to look at Claire’s portrait of Isobel. Isobel stares back from the painting, not at her. At what? Staring out, Isobel recedes, drowning, into the darkness behind her.

What a meal they have produced! Chickens and platters of vegetables and a marvelously silly-looking peaked and scroll-rimmed pie. They sit at the big table eating quietly and appreciatively while the fire snaps and breathes. Outside, the brilliant white earth curves against a black sky, and black shadows of the snow-laden trees and telephone wires lie across it; there is light everywhere—a great, white moon, and stars flung out, winking.

Derek leans back in his chair, closing his eyes and letting one arm fall around Mary Katherine’s chair. She casts a ruminating, regretful glance over him; when she looks away again it is as though he has been covered with a sheet.

Isobel gets up from the table and stretches. A silence falls around her like petals. She goes to the rug in front of the fire and lies down, her hair fanning out around her. Lynnie follows groggily and curls up on one of the sofas.

“That was perfect,” Claire says. “Ideal. And now I’m going upstairs.” She burns feverishly for a moment as she pauses in the doorway, but then subsides into her usual smoky softness.

“Good night,” Lynnie calls, and for full seconds after Claire has disappeared from view the others stare at the tingling darkness where she was.

Ross pushes his chair back from the table and walks over to the rug where Isobel lies. “Who’s for a walk?” he says, looking down at her.

Mary Katherine stubs out a cigarette. “Come on,” Ross says, prodding Isobel with his foot. Isobel looks at his foot, then away.

Ross is standing just inches from Lynnie; she can feel his outline—a little extra density of air.

“Derek,” Mary Katherine says softly. “It’s time to go. Lynnie? Isobel?”

“I can run the girls home later,” Ross says.

“Right,” Mary Katherine says after a moment. She goes to the closet for her coat.

“Come on, you two,” Ross says. “Up. Isobel? This is not going to last—” He gestures toward the window. “It’s tonight only. Out of the cave, lazy little bears. Into the refreshing night.”

Ross reaches a hand down to Isobel. She considers it, then looks up at him. “I hate to be refreshed,” she says, still looking at him, and shifts slightly on the rug.

“I don’t believe this,” Mary Katherine says quietly.

Lynnie sits up. The stars move back, then forward. The snow flashes, pitching her almost off balance. “Wait, wait,” Isobel says, scrambling to her feet as Mary Katherine goes to the door. “We’re coming.”

In the car Derek makes a joke, but no one laughs. Next to Lynnie, Isobel sits in a burnished silence. Branches support a canopy of snow over them as they drive out onto the old highway. Three cars are parked in front of the motel. They are covered with snow; no tire tracks are visible. All the motel windows are dark except one, where a faint aureole escapes from behind the curtain. Isobel breathes—just a feather of a sigh—and leans back against the seat.

Lynnie wakes up roughly, crying out as though she were being dragged through a screen of sleep into the day. Frank is no longer in his bed, and the room is bright. Lynnie sits up, shivering, exhausted from the night, and sees that the sun is already turning the snow to a glaze.

“You got in late enough,” Lynnie’s mother says when Lynnie comes downstairs.

“I tried not to wake you,” Lynnie says.

“I can imagine,” her mother says. “You were knocking things over left and right. I suppose those people gave you plenty to drink.”