The Collected Stories of Deborah Eisenberg (7 page)

“What do you mean, you don’t know?” Maureen said. “You were there.”

Even though my face was in my hands, I could tell Maureen was staring at me. “Well,” she said after a while. “Hey. Want to play some Clue?” She got the Clue board down from her room, and we played about ten games.

The next week I really did stay over at Maureen’s.

“Again?” my mother said. “We must do something for Mrs. MacIntyre. She’s been so nice to you.”

Dougie and Kevin showed up together after Maureen and Carolina and I had eaten a barbecued chicken from the deli and Carolina had gone to her room to watch the little TV that Mrs. MacIntyre had put there. I figured it was no accident that Dougie had shown up with Kevin. It had to be a brainstorm of Maureen’s, and I thought, Well, so what. So after Maureen and Kevin went up to Maureen’s room I went into the den with Dougie. We pretty much knew from classes and books and stuff what to do, so we did it. The thing that surprised me most was that you always read in books about “stained sheets,” “stained sheets,” and I never knew what that meant, but I guess I thought it would be pretty interesting. But the little stuff on the sheet just looked completely innocuous, like Elmer’s glue, and it seemed that it might even dry clear like Elmer’s glue. At any rate, it didn’t seem like anything that Carolina would have to absolutely kill herself about when she did the laundry.

We went back into the living room to wait, and I sat while Dougie walked around poking at things on the shelves. “Look,” Dougie said, “Clue.” But I just shrugged, and after a while Maureen and Kevin came downstairs looking pretty pleased with themselves.

I sat while Dr. Wald finished at the machine, and I waited for him to say something, but he didn’t.

“Am I going to go blind?” I asked him finally, after all those months.

“What?” he said. Then he remembered to look at me and smile. “Oh, no, no. We won’t let it come to that.”

I knew what I would find at Jake’s, but I had to go anyway, just to finish. “Have you seen Chris?” I asked one of the waitresses. “Or Mark?”

“They haven’t been around for a while,” she said. “Sheila,” she called over to another waitress, “where’s Chris these days?”

“Don’t ask me,” Sheila said sourly, and both of them stared at me.

I could feel my blood traveling in its slow loop, carrying a heavy proudness through every part of my body. I had known Chris could injure me, and I had never cared how much he could injure me, but it had never occurred to me until this moment that I could do anything to him.

Outside, it was hot. There were big bins of things for sale on the sidewalk, and horns were honking, and the sun was yellow and syrupy. I noticed two people who must have been mother and daughter, even though you couldn’t really tell how old either of them was. One of them was sort of crippled, and the other was very peculiar looking, and they were all dressed up in stiff, cheap party dresses. They looked so pathetic with their sweaty, eager faces and ugly dresses that I felt like crying. But then I thought that they might be happy, much happier than I was, and that I just felt sorry for them because I thought I was better than they were. And I realized that I wasn’t really different from them anyhow—that every person just had one body or another, and some of them looked right and worked right and some of them didn’t—and I thought maybe it was myself I was feeling sorry for, because of Chris, or maybe because it was obvious even to me, a total stranger, how much that mother loved her homely daughter in that awful dress.

When Mother and Penelope and I got back home, I walked over to Maureen’s house, but I decided not to stop. I walked by the playground and looked in at the fourth-grade room and the turtle that was still lumbering around its dingy aquarium, and it came into my mind how even Paul was older now than the kids who would be sitting in those tiny chairs in the fall, and I thought about all the millions and billions of people in the world, all getting older, all trapped in things that had already happened to them.

When I was a kid, I used to wonder (I bet everyone did) whether there was somebody somewhere on the earth, or even in the universe, or ever had been in all of time, who had had exactly the same experience that I was having at that moment, and I hoped so badly that there was. But I realized then that that could never occur, because every moment is all the things that have happened before and all the things that are going to happen, and every moment is just the way all those things look at one point on their way along a line. And I thought how maybe once there was, say, a princess who lost her mother’s ring in a forest, and how in some other galaxy a strange creature might fall, screaming, on the shore of a red lake, and how right that second there could be a man standing at a window overlooking a busy street, aiming a loaded revolver, but how it was just me, there, after Chris, staring at that turtle in the fourth-grade room and wondering if it would die before I stopped being able to see it.

One sparkly evening not long after my husband and I had started divorce proceedings, Rafe stopped by for a drink before taking me out to dinner. In his hand was a spray of flowers, and on his face was an expression of inward alertness, and both of these things I suspected to be accoutrements of love.

“Marvelous new coat,” I said. “Alpaca, yes?”

“Yup,” Rafe said, dropping it onto a chair with an uncharacteristic lack of attention. “England last week. Well, then!” He looked around brightly in the manner of someone who, having discharged some weighty task, is ready to start afresh.

Heavens, he was behaving oddly. I waited for him to say something enlightening, or to say anything at all, for that matter, which he failed to do, so I sat him down and poured him a drink and waited some more.

“Incredibly strange out there,” was his eventual contribution. “Dark and crowded.”

“England,” I said, mystified. “England has become dark and crowded.”

“Yes?” Rafe said. “Oh, actually, I’d been thinking of Sixty-seventh Street.”

Hmm. Obviously I would have to give Rafe quite a bit of encouragement if I wanted to hear about the girlfriend whom, by now, I was absolutely certain he’d acquired. And I did want to. I always enjoyed hearing about, and meeting, his woman of the moment. Rafe, like a hawk, swooped down upon the shiniest thing in sight, and his girls were always exotics of one sort or another, if only, as they often were, exotics ordinaire; but whatever their background, race, or interests, they were all amusing, marvelous looking, unpredictable, and none of them seemed ever to require sleep.

Unfortunately, these flashing lights of Rafe’s life tended to burn out rather quickly, no matter how in thrall Rafe was initially. And this was the inevitable consequence, I believed, of the discrepancy between his age and theirs. It was not that I necessarily felt that Rafe should be seeing people of our own age (we were both thirty-three, as it happened). In fact, it would have seemed inappropriate. Rafe, at any age, would simply not be suited for the sobriety of adulthood. Still, the years do pass, and there were Rafe’s girls, trailing along a decade or so behind him. They could hardly be blamed if they hadn’t accrued enough substance (of the sort that only time can provide) to allow Rafe to stretch out his dealings with them beyond a month or two.

“So. I give up, Rafael,” I said. “Tell me. Who is the lucky girl you’re in love with tonight?”

“Tonight!” he said, and damned if he didn’t look wounded.

Now, Rafe was my friend. It was Rafe who had accompanied me to parties and openings and weekends when John, my husband, was too busy (as he usually was) or not interested enough (and he rarely was), and it was Rafe who pulled me out of any mental mud wallow I might strand myself in, and it was Rafe I was counting on to amuse me now, while John and I parceled out our holdings and made our adieus and slogged through whatever contractual and emotional dreariness was necessitated by going on with life; and if Rafe was going to mature, this was certainly a very poor moment for him to have chosen to do it.

“As it happens,” Rafe confessed unnecessarily, “I have started seeing someone.”

“Really,” I said.

“She’s simply wonderful,” he said with the fatuous solemnity of a man on the witness stand.

“Good!” I said. I did hope she was wonderful, even though I deplored the dent she seemed to have put in Rafe’s sense of humor. “What does she do?”

“Well…” Rafe deliberated. “She’s an actress.”

“Poor thing,” I said after some moments had elapsed during which Rafe executed several groupings of resolute nods. “It’s such a difficult way to make a living.”

Another nod-group. “It is. Yes it is. That’s an Ansel Adams, isn’t it? Is it new?”

“Darling. I’ve just moved it from the dining room.”

“Oh, yes, of course.” Rafe stared at it blankly. “Well, it’s sensational in here, isn’t it?”

“So, tell me,” I said. “Is your friend in some sort of company or repertory situation? Or does she trot about in the summers being Juliet and My Sister Eileen and so on? Or must she spend every minute subjecting herself to scrutiny and rejection?”

“Well, she’s done quite a bit of all of those things, yes. Not at the moment, but that’s certainly the idea. Yes.”

“Oh, dear,” I said. “She doesn’t have to work in a restaurant, does she? How awful!”

“Oh, not at all,” Rafe said. “No. She’s doing very well.” He scanned the walls for material.

“I’m glad you like the Ansel Adams, Rafe,” I said.

“As a matter of fact,” he said, “she has a job on a soap opera.”

“Well!” I said. “Isn’t that splendid! And it will certainly tide her over until she finds something she wants.” Oh, why did Rafe always do this? Girl after girl. He was like some noble hound who daily fetched home the
New York Post
instead of the
Times.

“What’s the matter with that?” Rafe said.

“Nothing,” I said. “With what?”

“She’s just exactly as much an actress as—oh, God, I don’t know—Lady Macbeth would be, in one of those new-wave festivals you’re so fond of.”

“Just exactly,” I said.

“It’s honest work,” he said.

“Heavens, Rafe,” I said. “Did I say it wasn’t?” These propositions of his were hardly sturdy enough to rebut.

“I’m quite impressed, really,” Rafe said. My goodness, Rafe was bristly! Apparently he was quite embarrassed by this girl. “She’s very young, for one thing, and she took herself straight to New York from absolutely nowhere, and immediately she got herself a job in a demanding, lucrative, competitive field.”

Field!
“Well, you won’t get me to say I think it isn’t impressive,” I said, making it clear that this was to be the end of the discussion. “Can I give you another drink?”

“Please,” he said. The sound of pouring gave us something sensible to listen to for a moment.

“So, then,” I said. “What’s the name of this show she’s on?”

“Well,” Rafe said, “it’s called, as I remember, something on the order of, er, ‘This Brief Candle.’” He focused furiously over my ear.

Well, stuffiness is often an early adjunct of infatuation, and I was perfectly willing to let Rafe have his say. If he wanted to tell me that this girl should be knighted—or canonized or bronzed—for getting herself a job on a soap opera, that was fine. What was so irritating was that every time Rafe thought I might open my mouth, he leapt to the attack, and by the time we got into a taxi, I would have been happier getting into a bullring with a bunch of picadors.

Fortunately, the restaurant Rafe had chosen turned out to be wonderfully soothing. It was luxurious and private, and at the sight of the cloakroom, with its rows of expensive, empty coats that called up a world in which generous, broad-shouldered men, and women in marvelous dresses (much like the one I myself happened to be wearing) inclined toward each other on banquettes, I was pierced by a feeling so keen and unalloyed it might have been called—I don’t know what it might have been called. It felt like—well, grief…actually.

During dinner, Rafe and I stayed on neutral territory—a piece of recent legislation, Marty Harnishveiger’s renovations, an exceptionally pointless East Side murder, and my husband and marriage.

“One really oughtn’t be able to describe one’s marriage as neutral territory, do you think?” I asked Rafe.

“Considering the minefields that most of our friends’ marriages are,” he said, “neutral territory might be the preferable alternative.”

“I suppose,” I said. “But ‘preferable alternative’ hardly seems, in itself, the answer to one’s prayers. At least all those minefield marriages around us must have something in them to make them explosive.”

“Probably incompatibility,” Rafe pointed out. “On the other hand, I never really did understand why you married John.”

“He’s not so bad,” I said. I reminded Rafe that John was in many ways an exemplary husband. “He’s highly respected, he has marvelous taste, he’s very good looking in a harmless sort of way, he’s rich to begin with and makes good money on top of that…”

“No, I know,” Rafe said. “I didn’t mean to insult him. He’s a very nice guy, after all. And I have to say you looked terrific together. It’s just that—well, you never seemed to have much fun with him.”

“Fun?” I said. “How do you expect the poor guy to be fun? He’s not even alive.”

Rafe looked suddenly stricken, as if he’d realized he might have left his wallet somewhere. I wondered what he was thinking about, but I didn’t want to pry, so I went on. “Have you heard he’s been seeing Marcia Meaver? They’re probably sitting around together right this minute, wowing each other with forbidden tales of investment banking.”

“She’s quite nice, though,” Rafe said after a moment. “I’ve met her.”

“Oh, I suppose she is,” I said. “I didn’t mean to be nasty.”

“I know,” Rafe said. “I know you didn’t.”

We ordered brandies and leaned back against the leather, considering. I was just getting bored when Rafe hunched forward, peering into his glass.

“What?” I said.

“Nothing,” he said. “Ah, well. I guess it just doesn’t do, does it, to marry someone on the strength of their credentials.”

“Oh, good point, Rafe,” I said. “How ever did you think of it?”

“Sorry,” he said.

“You’re really crazy about this girl, aren’t you?” I said.

Then, oddly enough, Rafe just laughed, and his sunny self shone out from behind his strange mood. “I know,” he said, “I know. I always say, ‘This time it’s different, this time it’s different,’ but you know what? Each time, poor girls, it
is
different.” And Rafe looked so pleased with himself and his girls, so confident of my approval—his smile was so heedless, so winning, so
his
—that, well, I was simply forced to smile back.

Smile or no, though, this girl had obviously had an effect on Rafe, and it occurred to me that it would be interesting to tune in on her show to see if I could pick her out from among her fellow soap girls. So the next morning I picked up a
TV Guide
on my way home from exercise class and scanned it for “This Brief Candle.” I always did my work in the afternoons (we members of the grants committee of the foundation worked separately until after we had made our initial recommendations to the panel), and I had a lunch date at one, so I was pleased to find that the show aired at eleven.

When I turned on the set, a few cats wavered into view and discussed cat food, and then, after an awe-inspiring chord or two, an hour in the lives of the characters of “This Brief Candle” was revealed to the world. During this hour, a girl I later came to know as Ellie confided to her mother that she suspected her boyfriend of cheating on an exam in order to get into medical school to please his father. Then Colleen, apparently a school counselor of some sort, made a phone call to a person who seemed to be the father—no, the stepfather—of another person, named Stevie. She wished to talk to him, she said, about Stevie’s performance. Ominous music suggested that Stevie’s performance was either remarkably poor or a mere pretext for Colleen to see Stevie’s stepfather. Perhaps Stevie and Ellie’s boyfriend were one and the same person! No, surely this Stevie fellow must be far too young. But, on the other hand—

Well, no time to mull that over: two men, Hank and Brent, I gathered, were parking a car outside a house and hoping that they would not arouse the suspicions of Eric, who, it seemed, was someone inside the house; Eric could not be made nervous, they told each other between heavy, charged silences, if they were ever going to get inside and break into his safe for those papers.

Oop! An office materialized, containing a devastatingly attractive silver-haired gentleman. Eric? Ellie’s father? Stevie’s stepfather? Aha! Not Ellie’s father, because Ellie’s
mother
walked in and said, “Forgive me for coming here like this, Mr. Armstrong, but I must speak to you right away about the plans for the new power plant.” And surely Ellie’s mother would not go around calling this man “Mr. Armstrong” if he were Ellie’s father. Although she might, come to think of it, under certain circumstances, because, for instance, I couldn’t help noticing that Mr. Armstrong’s secretary was sitting right there with a very funny look on her face. (But wait:
plans
are something that could fit in a
safe
! And maybe Mr. Armstrong’s secretary looked like that because she was in cahoots with Hank or Brent. Or Eric, for that matter.) “Come in here, Cordelia, where we can talk privately,” said Mr. Armstrong, escorting Ellie’s mother into an interior office. (“Cordelia,” when
she
called
him
“Mr. Armstrong”? Oh,
sure.
) “Hold my calls, please, Tracy,” he said to his secretary. “Certainly, Mr. Armstrong,” Tracy said, the funny look solidifying on her face. No, clearly it was something about Mr. Armstrong, not some old
safe
, that had caused Tracy to look like that.

Here was someone named Carolyn being kissed passionately by a man in a suit. “Oh, Shad, Shad,” she said. Shad? Why
Shad
? “Chad, my darling,” Carolyn continued, wisely abandoning her attempt to kiss him while saying her lines. “Carolyn, Carolyn,” said Chad, I suppose it was (although, come to think of it, I’d never heard of anyone called Chad, either). “Chad,” said Carolyn. “Carolyn,” said Chad. “Lydia!” said both Chad and Carolyn, breaking apart, as the camera drew back to reveal a woman standing in a doorway. “Well. My dear little sister,” said this new woman, coolly. “And good old Chad. Aren’t you going to welcome me home, you two? I’ve come back. And this time I’ve come back to stay.”

“So!” I said when I got through to Rafe at his office. “I just saw ‘This Brief Candle’—what’s your crush’s name?”

“Heather Goldberg,” he said.

“What?” I said. “Oh. Her
nom
, not her name.”

“How should I know?” Rafe said. “I can’t watch that stuff—I’m employed.”