The Lesson (17 page)

“Kevin, you know I’m not married.”

“You’re not engaged.”

He said this last line a little too matter-of-factly. How much did he know about her past? She didn’t respond.

“Let’s see. You’re in love with someone else, but he’s not around. You’re not married. You’re not engaged. You have nothing to do tonight. And I have two tickets to a Gilbert and Sullivan show. Sound likes the perfect solution to a boring evening to me. What’s the problem?”

“I never said I had nothing to do tonight!” she said, exasperated. “And there is no problem!”
Why do you keep pushing?

“Good. Then why don’t I pick you up in an hour? We’ll get a bite to eat before the show. You’ll love Gilbert and Sullivan,” said Kevin.

“I wouldn’t be so sure about that. I’m suffering through seventeenth century literature right now, and I have to take Chaucer next year. I haven’t even met him yet and I already hate him.”

“That’s surprising coming from you. You’re an English major.”

“So? Every third word of my required reading is written in Anglo Proto something or other. Old English. Middle English. Whatever. My readings for Spanish class are easier to translate. I get tired of having to read the footnotes every other line just to understand some dumb dated joke about a politician or courtesan who lived three hundred years ago. If you have to explain a joke it isn’t funny. My Shakespeare class was like that too.”

“That won’t be a problem,” said Kevin. “First, Gilbert and Sullivan wrote their stuff in the nineteenth century, so it’s not hard to follow. Second, it’s the story of a buccaneer who gets the girl in the end but not before going through all kinds of pain. I would think you’d enjoy that.”

Gina was embarrassed. She should have known in which period Gilbert and Sullivan wrote their librettos. She was the one attending the fancy university, not him. But his dig about the buccaneer didn’t go over her head. She was certain she could hear him smiling through the phone. She had underestimated him.

“If I keep accepting invitations to go out with you, you’ll think I’m serious,” she said.

“If you keep turning me down, that would be very serious.”

“Kevin, I told you I didn’t want to string you along. Why do you keep calling me?”
I practically abuse you. Give up already.

“I like your company. And I think you like mine. And I have these tickets. It’s a matter of economics. I can’t let these tickets go to waste. And how could dinner and a show with a friend be a mistake?”

Gina heard a little voice inside her head:
Mistake! Mistake!

“Okay, Kevin. Just dinner. Just a show. Just friends. Just this once.
Nothing more.”

Without hesitation he agreed. Gina heard the click of his phone h
anging up, but only in a distant way, because what really rang in her ears were his words.
You’re in love with someone else but he’s not around. You’re not engaged, you’re not engaged, you’re not engaged.

So what was the problem? She hung up the receiver and sank back down into the couch, which wasn’t hard to do since it was more than twenty years old. Time again for one of her frequent sessions of self-analysis, self-flagellation, and self-pity.

Why was she going out with Kevin again? Was she that desperate? She’d never had to ask herself such difficult questions when Michael was around. Life—and love—were so simple then. He loved her, she loved him. Michael and Gina, Gina and Michael. When Michael was in her life she never had to ask herself whether she would or should go out with anyone. Love then was not an all-day, agonizing analysis of what was the best or right thing to do when the phone rang. There was only Michael. With Michael her life course was set, her future secure: law school for her, marriage for both of them, then her first job as a real lawyer, following in his footsteps.

As Gina pondered her beautiful plans—her sparkling crystal palace where she had planted, watered, and nurtured her dreams with all that she had—she marveled how that house had fallen from its exalted place so suddenly, destroying her future in a moment in an unexpected, violent end. While
she longed for the past and mourned the life that would never be, it dawned on her for the first time how deceiving it is to think that one’s future will be a certain way, when the truth is that no one really knows what lies ahead. Her plans for a blissful future with Michael had shattered into fragments in a matter of days. She couldn’t put her crystal palace together again. Would her heart remain forever in little pieces too?

Plan A was shattered forever, and she didn’t have a Plan B. In the past she’d been at the wheel, looking through the windshield in broad daylight, the highway in clear view. Now she was falling headlong into the future, as if she’d tumbled down a dark well. She knew nothing of what life had in store for her now. She had prayed about it, but God wasn’t talking. She still had plans to go to law school, but lately when she thought about studying law she felt empty and depressed. She had this gentle scratching in her soul when her mind drifted to law school. Something wasn’t right. It wasn’t as before. Was it because Michael wouldn’t be there to cheer her on? She hoped she had more backbone than that. She had tried and tried to sort out this new, disturbing feeling. She couldn’t clearly separate her feelings about law school from her thoughts of Michael, because for so long they had been bound together. Was it law school itself that seemed grim, or was it law school without Michael that seemed meaningless? She didn’t know, and it bothered her that she couldn’t even figure out her own mind on the matter.

But right now she had a more pressing matter: what to wear tonight. She would have no trouble making up her mind on that score. Kevin was a bit of an oddity with his weird clothes and aggressive ways, but she had determined that, in one important respect, he was totally normal. He liked girls to look like girls. She wasn’t going to disappoint him. She would wear her solid blue, long-sleeve dress with the cinched waist, accented by a rainbow-stripe stretch belt that made her look shapely indeed. It was one of her favorite dresses. The wide belt made her look slender in the waist and the fullness in the bodice hid what was missing on top.

As she pulled it from the closet, she silently prayed that Kevin would show up in uniform and leave his civilian clothes at home.

The Garage, Boston Avenue, San Jose

Just as he said, Kevin arrived exactly an hour later. When Gina heard the familiar, tinny sound of his beetle, she hurried to her living room window to see what he was wearing. She was relieved to see him step from the car wearing dress blues. She was about to meet him at the door, but that might make her look eager, so she waited for him to knock. She knew she looked good, and as she opened the door she saw Kevin quickly look at her from head to toe and smile.

Kevin spoke enthusiastically of Gilbert and Sullivan as they drove the six miles to the Montgomery Theater at the corner of West San Carlos and South Market in San Jose. Gina had no expectations of a comic opera, but he seemed to know all about this one, so she listened politely as he gave her a detailed background of the story. She was just glad to be out of her claustrophobic apartment for the evening, and she liked wearing her blue dress. Kevin wasn’t wearing anything that
would cause people to stare, so before long she started to relax.

Original Joe’s restaurant was only a half mile from the theater so they decided to have dinner there. While they ate “Joe’s Special”—a unique and surprisingly tasty scramble of fresh spinach, eggs, and ground chuck—Kevin entertained her with hilarious stories of sailors who disappeared while their ships were at sea. Gina hadn’t been brought up to make jokes of the tragedies of others (except when the tragedies involved her sisters) and was privately aghast at his accounts. But Kevin always turned tragedy into grand comedy. She felt guilty about laughing so hard at his riotous jokes but she couldn’t help it.

“So what happened to them?” Gina asked.

“Well, no one knows for sure, but often they were unpopular, noxious types anyway, so you can pretty much figure it out. It was commonly assumed that some of their fellow sailors thought they made better fish food than cabin mates. Especially if they snored.”

“They wouldn’t really throw someone overboard just for snoring, would they?” said Gina, horrified. It was hard to tell when Kevin was serious or just teasing.

“Well, let’s just say that certain guys, if they slept at all, found it more healthful to sleep on their backs.” He paused and smiled. “With their eyes open.”

“You don’t know anyone who’s done that, thrown someone overboard, do you?”

“No,” said Kevin, “but I know lots of puny guys who have used the threat of it as leverage with big bullies. The Davy Jones’ Locker defense. Very effective. To be honest, I’ve thought of using it myself a few times.”

After dinner they walked to Montgomery Theater to watch the show, a silly story marked, in Gina’s interpretation, by a lot of hand wringing and shouting. It was only nine o’clock when they emerged from the lobby, passing through Spanish arches under the red tile roof of the 1930s theater to the sidewalk in front. The evening air was clear and balmy, and though the sun had set completely, the evening didn’t seem finished yet. Gina wondered what they could do to kill some more time on this pretty evening. She didn’t want to go back to her silent, empty apartment. Then Kevin spoke.

“I want to show you something, a surprise.” He motioned for her to come with him as they walked the two blocks to his beetle.

“What is it?”

“You’ll see,” he said, smiling. He seemed to take great pleasure in his little secret. “It’s close. We’ll be there in just a few minutes.”

They drove southeast on South Market Street toward West San Carlos. They turned right on San Carlos and then soon turned right again onto Boston Avenue. Gina had spent little of her growing up years in this part of San Jose and didn’t know where she was, but Kevin seemed right at home. And he was correct: it took only about six minutes before he turned into the driveway of a very small parcel of property, a little one-story house with a one-car-wide driveway to the right. The modest 1920s cracker box appeared well kept and homey, the kind elderly widows live in with their overfed cats. Its wood siding was painted a tired gray. It had a small front porch with a wood lattice to the left for privacy. To the left and right of the central front door were single windows. At the end of the driveway was a maintained but weathered, single-car, unpainted wood garage. Both structures were dark. Apparently whoever lived in the little house had gone to bed.

Kevin parked the beetle in front of the garage and turned off the engine. Towering deciduous trees that had not yet shed their leaves blocked most of the thin glow of streetlight. The darkness pressed into the beetle. Kevin reached for a flashlight he kept between the seats.

“What is this?” said Gina.

“You’ll see,” he said again, and then he opened his door.

Kevin walked around to her side of the beetle and helped her out. But this time she didn’t quickly let go of his hand after exiting because it was so dark. He led her confidently to a side door at the end of the garage farthest from his beetle and facing the backyard. He pulled a key from his pocket and let them both in. Inside the garage was even darker than the yard because the ancient wood structure had only one small window not far from the door. For once Gina was glad to be standing so close to Kevin. He told her to stand still a moment—which he needn’t have bothered to do because her feet were frozen to the floor in that pitch black room—while he searched for the pull chain. A few seconds later Gina heard a scratchy sound, and then a single bare bulb came to life above their heads, casting its ghostly yellow pall on the two of them.

Even with the light on, the dingy little room remained in shadows. The bulb glowed weakly, so that all four corners loomed dark and menacing. Gina looked all around in wonderment. It was obvious that someone, likely two people, lived in this dreary little garage. Directly across from the side entry door that they had stepped through was a lumpy, low-to-the-ground, twin-size bed.
Cater corner from that bed was another twin-size bed, equally humble. Matching dull brown sleeping bags stretched out flat on both beds, the side zippers completely fastened and the bag openings concealed by pillows. Likely to keep things from crawling inside, thought Gina. The crude wood shelves along the walls held all sorts of oddments, mostly folded clothes, books, a man’s hat, men’s shoes, and the like. Above the first bed she noticed a smoker’s pipe and a can of tobacco. That explained the rank stench of pipe smoke that permeated the room. Every surface was covered with something, mostly books, and there were piles of items on the gray cement floor, neatly pushed against the walls. Gina got the feeling that the piles were a permanent form of storage. Though nothing was exactly dirty, everything was drab and dusty, including a few mismatched throw rugs that had been thrown haphazardly over the concrete floor. It was like being inside the basement of a turn-of-the-century house, but drier. Gina clutched her purse tightly and kept her arms near her body so that she wouldn’t brush up against anything that moved of its own power, especially if it moved on more than two feet.

She was surprised at how tiny the room was. The outside of the garage had looked to be long enough to house a car and store household items, but it appeared half that size on the inside. Then Gina noticed that someone had constructed a crude wall in the center of the garage, which broke up the interior space into two small rooms. At the head of the second bed was an opening to the second room. She walked over to it and put her head through the dark doorway. She saw an old kitchenette, which was even darker than the first room because the single bulb didn’t shine back there. The kitchenette clearly hadn’t been used in a long time. It was filled with storage items, mostly junk. The counters and floor were covered with boxes; other forgotten items of daily living were stacked on top of them. It was too small even for a two-person table, and its narrow aisle too cluttered for a person to enter. The sink was filled with old books. A dusty, ancient curtain covered one small window.