The Collected Stories of Deborah Eisenberg (46 page)

“Don’t I like you?” I said. I held her away from me and studied her, but she was serious. “What do you mean? I adore you.”

I smiled and gave her a squeeze, but it was a few moments before she spoke. “So then, listen, Dennis. Why did you have to trot out my—my
credentials
for the McGees?”

“I thought you’d be pleased,” I said, amazed. Explained that I’d only been trying to provide her with an excuse not to see them. “Besides,” I said. “Why shouldn’t I be proud of you?”

She drew away from me. “Dennis, who are these people to demand respectability from me? I don’t
like
these people. These people are idiots.”

Felt oddly stricken. Can’t really blame Sarah—that’s how she feels. But, still, McGees are clearly doing their best to be hospitable, pleasant. “Of course, the McGees might not be our favorite people,” I said. “But why should they be?” Tucked an unruly label back inside Sarah’s T-shirt. “And, after all, they’re perfectly harmless.”

Sarah stared sadly into the lively crowds.

“Besides,” I said. “They’re getting on.” I stooped over, quavered. “I’ll be like that soon myself, I suppose.”

Sarah frowned again, then laughed. “Oh,
Dennis
,” she said, but her hand crept over and curled into mine, like a pliant little animal.

Wednesday

“Relaxed, intimate, and romantic!” was the first thing I heard this morning—Woke up to see Sarah reading the notes about
Buen Pastor
I’d started to slam together last night when we got in from dinner, which I’d imprudently left right in the typewriter. (No more of that, you can be sure! From now on, everything gets put away immediately. Locked up.) Sarah laughed incredulously. “You call that place relaxed, intimate, and romantic?”

“For God’s sake,” I said. “That’s just a draft! I hadn’t even finished.”

“Well, when you get around to ‘revising your draft,’” Sarah said, “you might mention that the first thing you see when you get to the door is some kind of
butler
with a machine gun.”

“Submachine gun,” I said. “Machine guns are larger.”

“Oh, well, then,” Sarah said.

“Besides,” I said. I rubbed my eyes. “I can’t just put that into my piece, can I, Sarah?”

“Why can’t you?” she said. She sat down next to me on the bed. “Dennis.”

“Because,” I said. “Sarah, please. I’m supposed to be writing about people’s
vacations.
”

Sarah stuffed a corner of the pillow into her mouth.

“I’m sorry,” I said. Couldn’t suppress a sigh. “I wasn’t aware, last night, that the guard upset you.”

“Naturally he upset me,” Sarah said. “I assumed he upset you, too.”

“Of course he did,” I said. “Naturally he upset me.” (Naturally I was upset when I went to give my name to the maître d’ and saw that thing pointing at me. But it isn’t as though restaurants at home don’t have their own security systems.) “Sarah—” I took her hand. “What’s happened? Has something happened? Have you been having an awful time here?”

Gloomy, theatrical pause. “The truth is, Dennis,” she said, “I’ve been having a terrific time.”

That sound ominously familiar; that muted, baffled, fragile tone designed to censure. Can’t understand it—some sort of curse hovering over me that makes women sad? The women who are attracted to me are active, capable women. Women with interesting and demanding careers. Women, sometimes, with reasonably happy marriages, families. (Which, granted, can have its drawbacks, but one expects it, at least, to ensure a certain degree of stability.) Yet how rapidly these self-sufficient women become capricious and sulky. Absolutely unglued. Even the perky, adventurous wives who come my way (unsolicited, unsolicited!) simply
transform
themselves. And these women, who, I think it’s fair to say, engage me for nothing more than, to use Sarah’s (rather crude) word,
fun
—these same women—invariably begin to accuse me, in the most amorphous terms, of some unsubstantiated crime. It’s a strange thing. It is. All these women, showing up on my doorstep, demanding my attention and affection. And then, when I’ve given them every bit of attention and affection I’ve got, insisting that I’ve failed them in some way. “Self-absorption,” one of them said. “Shallowness of feeling,” said another. As though I were some kind of broken
vending
machine!

Margaret S.? Who actually claimed I was “rejecting” at the very moment
she
was leaving
me?
Even Cynthia—my own wife—so happy when I married her, so confident; the way she became self-pitying and tremulous in front of my very eyes! Implored her to tell me what was the matter. Huge error. The matter was me, naturally; I was not really interested in her. Not
interested
! And the way, when I pointed out the irrefutable demonstrations of my interest, she would become incoherent: “Not that, not that! You know that’s not what I’m talking about.”

“Sarah,” I said, “when we were in San Francisco you told me you loved traveling. That’s what you said. You said you
loved traveling.
”

“When we were in San Francisco,” Sarah said, “and I told you I loved traveling, we were in San Francisco.”

“Well, but travel is travel,” I said. “One sees new things.”

“‘New things!’” Sarah said. “Guys in uniforms with automatics?”

“Now, that’s not fair,” I said gently. Waited for a moment so she would hear the whining tone of her own voice, see the roomful of her happy purchases, see out the wooden-shuttered window, where a jaunty little halo of cloud sat over the peak of a volcano, and women padded silently by with their black-eyed babies bundled on their backs.

“I’m sorry, Dennis,” she said. Clambered over into my lap. Twined herself around me. “I just feel so strange. I don’t know what’s going on. The thing is, I really
am
having a terrific time.”

Faint sounds of a brass band and the fragrance of incense were beginning to filter into our room with the buttery sunlight. Persecuting loveliness. Rubbed the tender edge of Sarah’s ear. Pointed out that the restaurant was something like an airport, if you thought about it: protection irrelevant to most of the travelers.

“Well, I
know
,” Sarah said. “But who’s all the protection
from
, here? I mean, look, Dennis, who is the enemy?”

Snuggled her against me. Reminded her that we’ve all read about such things; pointed out that we’re overreacting, she and I, simply because we’re
here.

Made me think: How tempting it is to put oneself into the drama—“It’s awful;
I’ve
seen it.” Unattractive, self-aggrandizing impulse. Reminded Sarah of the morning we were having breakfast at her place and Karen stormed in, ranting about factory farming, and we kept saying, “We know, Karen, we know, it’s really awful.” Lifted Sarah’s chin and was rewarded with a reluctant smile. “But Karen couldn’t stop talking, remember? Because she had just
seen
it the day before. So, to her, it seemed just incredibly
real
?

“The thing is,” I said, “we could go around sniffling all the time, but terrible things are going to happen whether we sniffle or not. Yes, the lives some people lead are horrifying, but if you accept the idea that it’s better for some people to be fortunate than for no people to be fortunate, then it’s preposterous to make yourself miserable just because
you
happen to be one of those fortunate people. I mean, here we are, in an amazingly beautiful place, witnessing possibly the most lavish Easter celebration in the whole of the New World. Wouldn’t it be morally reprehensible not to enjoy it?”

Sarah sighed. “I know,” she said. “You’re right.”

“We could reject that out of principle,” I said. “But what would the principle
be
?”

“All right, Dennis.” Sarah jumped up and fluffed her hair. “I already said I agree.”

Came back to the room later, tempers restored by breakfast. María there, putting a jug of fresh water on the table. Said, “procession now?! Nice!!”

“Tell me something, Dennis,” Sarah said when María left. “
Do
you ever think about having another child?”

“Of course not,” I said. “I mean, I think about it, of course, but I don’t think about actually doing it.”

“Take it easy,” Sarah said. “I was just wondering.”

“I already have one perfectly good child,” I said. “An adult, now, actually, almost. It doesn’t make sense to start all over at my age. For someone your age—well, that’s a different story. You
should
have children.”

“I didn’t say I wanted children,” Sarah said crossly.

“You have every right to want children,” I said. Looked at her closely—a bit puffy? Due for her period any minute now, I think. “You’re one of those women who can do it all, you know. Career, family—”

“Hey,” Sarah said. “I didn’t say I wanted
children.
I was just asking how you feel.”

“I know,” I said. “Goodness.” I was just
saying
how I feel.

Especially hot today; was noticing it very suddenly—room darkened swoopingly. Put my head in my hands, then Sarah was speaking: “Listen, Dennis—are machine guns, like, a
lot
bigger than submachine guns?”

“Some of them,” I said. The fact is, David is much more vivid to me as I imagine him now, playing basketball with his friends, strolling away from the house in Claremont on his way to a movie, spinning along in his rattly little car, than he seems when he’s sitting across from me in some padded restaurant, waiting patiently for our visit to be over. “Why?”

“Because I think maybe that’s one out there.”

“Good Lord,” I said. Sat up to look out the window and saw a wooden platform coming down the street. It looked amazingly like one of the
andas
, except that it was accompanied by a convoy of soldiers in uniform instead of townspeople in purple satin, and in place of Christ or the Virgin Mary, it displayed a mounted machine gun. “Yup, that’s what it is, all right,” I told Sarah.

The soldiers—the hard-eyed, ravenous-looking boys—surged up beyond the window, and in their midst the lordly, searching weapon reigned. A plunging shame weakened my hands and my knees as though at any second that instrument of terrible destruction might swing around toward me, discovering the foolish incidentalness of my body, its humiliatingly provisional life. No one on the street appeared to notice the entourage. A path cleared apparently by casual occurrence; only sign of anything out of the ordinary: a barely perceptible slowing, a thickening of motion as it passed.

Sarah and I stood at the window, watched until the entire retinue, with its platform and its sickening gleam of metal, turned the corner. Within an instant nothing left but the soft bustle of the street.

I put my arm around Sarah, and the small intimacy conducted away my panic. Tried to reassure her: “If there were anything out of the ordinary occurring, someone would tell us.”

“Someone did tell us,” Sarah said.

“Who?” I said.

“María,” she said.

“The maid?” I said. “I mean someone who actually knows.”

“Like who?” Sarah said.

“Like a journalist, for example.”

Sarah stared at me. “Dennis,” she said. “
You’re
a journalist.”

“All right, Sarah,” I said. “Please.”

Does Sarah know how cruel she is sometimes? Obviously there’s no way in the world I’d be doing something of this sort if the bank hadn’t gone the way banks tend to go these days. “But you know what I mean. Obviously I’m not saying María doesn’t know what’s happening to her. Obviously she does know what’s happening to her. All I’m saying is that she has no way of
understanding
it. In context, that is. If I were you, I really wouldn’t worry about María. She has quite a little flair for drama, but the truth is that her attention is on the Easter celebrations. Festivities. Frivolous matters”—I smiled and pushed a strand of hair from Sarah’s eyes—“just like ours is.”

“Dennis,” Sarah said. “The
maid
is afraid to come to
work.
There’s a mounted
machine
gun rolling down the street.”

“I am not disputing that,” I said. “Obviously. It’s only that—Sarah, tell me something frankly. Are you embarrassed by what I do?”

“Embarrassed!” Sarah said, and actually blushed. “By what you do? Of course not, Dennis.”

“Look, Sarah,” I said. “This travel/restaurant business is every bit as much a joke to me as it is to you. And I would certainly never dream of calling myself a
journalist
—”

“Well, of course you’re a—”