The woman saw that the interior of the bathroom looked like—what was the French word?—an abattoir. Smeared blood on the impracticably white tile floor but also on the edge of the bathtub, which was made of old, yellowed marble, and on the shower curtain, which was a double curtain with a practical plastic inside and an outside of an impractical white lacy fabric, and onto the sink and counter, for in his flailing about the stricken man had gotten blood everywhere; the woman could not bear leaving the bathroom quite so shocking, for a poor chambermaid to clean, and swiped at the bloodstains with tissues and toilet paper while the stricken man continued to peer at himself in the mirror, tried to see the wound at the crown of his head, with a kind of pride now, and finished brushing his wavy, silvery-white hair that was thin at the crown of his head but thicker elsewhere.
He was a sturdy-bodied man of something beyond late middle age, in fact. A former athlete perhaps, or at any rate a man who’d kept himself fit longer than most out of determination, and vanity; the woman found herself admiring the man’s body, so much more solid than her own, so much more stolid, that resembled the Greek warrior statues she’d been seeing in the museums, broad-shouldered men with curly beards, broad chests covered in a sort of pelt, muscular arms, shoulders, legs wrought in the most exquisite antique marble. What gratitude the woman felt, what a flood of relief, that the man she’d discovered in the hotel room had not been seriously hurt!—had not been mortally injured. Never forget this moment, when things might have gone so differently.
Feeling better now, decidedly stronger, the man scarcely took note of the woman’s mood. Naked and confident he returned to the bedroom, to seek out underwear in a bureau drawer, step into shorts, needing the woman to steady him as he balanced on one leg; navy-blue spandex shorts that fitted his drum-like belly almost too tightly. On his torso a much-laundered undershirt through which short crinkly chest hairs poked like the quills of a small beast.
Will you pick out a shirt for me, dear?—the man asked, with a curious sort of submissiveness. Please.
As if after the debacle of the accident, a man so foolish could not dare to select a shirt for himself.
The woman peered into the closet, and selected a long-sleeved cotton shirt with a small geometric pattern, dark blue on white, not the sort of shirt an American tourist might wear on a balmy September day in Paris but a shirt that suggested a measure of dignity, and authority. A shirt that might have been worn by a professional man, a Parisian—attorney, physician. Professor. The selection of this particular shirt the man appreciated, for the shirt was one of his favorites, and fitted his image of himself as essentially dignified, and possessing authority, as well as a certain degree of achievement, reputation, affluence though (in fact) he was the very man who’d slipped ignominiously on a bathroom floor less than an hour ago, struck his head on a porcelain toilet, stunned himself, and might easily have died, in which case he would be dead at this very moment and not buttoning up his favorite shirt; and the American woman downstairs in the courtyard making annotations in the Paris guidebook would not (yet) have known what awaited upstairs in room 341 of the Hôtel de l’Abbaye.
As he dressed, and tied his shoelaces, the man could not resist recounting to the woman another time what had happened to him, for it was quite a remarkable episode—an accident; a freak accident; nothing that had ever happened to him before, or would ever happen again. His voice was expansive, bemused; the woman understood that soon the incident that had occurred in the bathroom of the French hotel would become an anecdote, one of the man’s travel anecdotes, to impress others, to startle others, to entertain others, to make them feel concern for the man even as his affable manner deflected concern, and to make them smile, for there had been no tragedy, no cracked skull, no abrupt and irremediable death, only a comical sort of accident involving a slippery floor, a mere pratfall the man would call it.
So relieved was the woman to see the man in good spirits, so relatively quickly after the accident, she came to him, to kiss him; and to give him a hug, as a mother might give a difficult child a hug, of reassurance, yet chidingly, with a sort of warning in the gesture, that the child might or might not acknowledge; and the man thanked her again for saving his life, as he said, extravagantly, helping him when he was helpless, abandoning her breakfast to come to his aid; and he kissed her in return, though distractedly, for there were other things on his mind, and he was very hungry by now, and was looking forward to the New York Times downstairs in the courtyard, and a basket of croissants, and those jams in miniature jars.
By the time the man was ready to leave the hotel room the woman had discovered belatedly that she was looking disheveled herself, and would have to comb her hair again; to her horror she saw that there were blood-smears on both the white linen jacket and the perfectly creased trousers, and so she would have to change her clothes; the man was leafing through the guidebook which the woman had brought to the room, telling her what he wanted to see that morning which wasn’t the Musée d’Orsay but the Musée Picasso.
He’d never seen the Picasso museum, he said. Every time he’d come to Paris he had wanted to see it and he never had.
The woman objected, she’d thought they had agreed on the d’Orsay and the man said no, they’d agreed on the Picasso. Looking at the guidebook the previous day, that was what they’d decided.
The woman protested faintly but it was no use—it was never any use. Even if she were correct, and she could not now absolutely recall if she were correct, as the man adamantly recalled that he was correct, if he were obliged to give in to her he would be sulky and sullen and not enjoy the museum despite its great art and its extraordinary setting; better if they visited the Picasso museum, which was much smaller, and would not tax the man’s strength so much as the mobbed Orsay. And no doubt the Picasso museum would be excellent, too. The woman would purchase postcards in the gift shop to send back home, and no doubt these would be perfectly adequate, it really didn’t matter what the postcards pictured at which the young grandchildren would do no more than glance, and perhaps not even glance.
At last making their way along the dimly lighted corridor to the carpeted steps the woman slipped her arm through the man’s arm, not to steady him or even to guide him, or rather not obviously to perform these functions, but out of great relief, a vast swell of relief, which would return to her through the day in waves, long after the man had (more or less) forgotten what the reason for such relief might have been, in the Hôtel de l’Abbaye on the rue Cassette, Paris.
Where Are You?
The husband had gotten into the habit of calling the wife from somewhere in the house; if she were upstairs he was downstairs, if she were downstairs he was upstairs, and when she answered “Yes? What?” he would continue to call her, as if he hadn’t heard, and with an air of strained patience—“Hello? Hello? Where are you?” And so she had no choice but to hurry to him, wherever he was, elsewhere in the house, downstairs, upstairs, in the basement or outside on the deck, in the backyard or in the driveway. “Yes?” she called, trying to remain calm, “What is it?” and he would cup his hand to his ear and tell her—a complaint, a remark, an observation, a reminder, a query; and then, later, she would hear him calling again with a new urgency, “Hello? Hello? Where are you?” and she would call back, “Yes? What is it?”—trying to determine where he was. And he would continue to call her, not hearing her, for he disliked wearing his hearing aid around the house, with only the wife to be heard, he’d complained that one of the little plastic devices in the shape of a snail hurt his ear, the tender inner ear was reddened, and had even bled, and so he would call, pettishly, “Hello? Where are you?” for the woman was always going off somewhere out of the range of his hearing, he never knew where the hell she was or what she was doing, at times her very being exasperated him; until finally she gave in and ran breathless to search for him, and when he saw her he said reproachfully, “Where were you? I worry about you when you don’t answer.” And she said, laughing, trying to
laugh, though none of this was funny, “But I was here all along!” and he retorted, “No, you were not. You were not. I was here and you were not here.” And later that day after his lunch and before his nap, unless it was before his nap and after his lunch, the wife heard the husband calling to her, “Hello? Hello? Where are you?” and the thought came to her—No. I will hide from him. But she would not do such a childish thing. Instead she stood on the stairs and cupped her hands to her mouth and called to him, “I’m here. I’m always here. Where else would I be?” but the husband couldn’t hear her and continued to call, “Hello? Hello? Where are you?” and at last she screamed, “What do you want?—I’ve told you, I’m here.” But the husband couldn’t hear and continued to call, “Hello? Hello? Where are you?—hello!” until finally the wife had no choice but to give in, for the husband was sounding vexed, and angry, and anxious, but descending the stairs she tripped, and fell, fell hard, and her neck was broken in an instant and she died at once at the foot of the stairs as in one of the downstairs rooms, or perhaps in the cellar, or on the deck at the rear of the house the husband continued to call, with mounting urgency and exasperation, “Hello? Hello? Where are you?”
The Crack
M__ was a conscientious was a conscientious girl to whom disaster was certain to happen and so she began at a young age to forestall it.
At first she took care never to step on cracks in the pavement on the way to school, until an older girl cautioned her that stepping on cracks was the very thing you must do, to forestall bad luck, and so the girl took care from then on to step on as many cracks as possible; but one day returning home from school she turned her ankle in an especially deep crack in the sidewalk, and fell, and was unable to walk without pain, and had to be driven back home by the mother of a classmate who claimed to be a friend of the girl’s mother. This sympathetic woman had seemed to know where the girl lived but was confounded by one-way streets and security barricades since an attempted bombing in the residential neighborhood the previous year and so wound up bringing the girl to the rear, not the front, of the building—“I’d help you upstairs, dear, but there’s nowhere for me to park. Can you make it on your own?”
Of course, the girl said yes. She was ten years old, not five years old, and knew very well how to enter the apartment building by the rear, through the underground parking lot. Security guards checked vehicles but waved schoolchildren without a second glance. Though her ankle was throbbing with pain it was not (yet) unbearable pain.
This, M__ would realize in retrospect, was not the first of the day’s missteps but would be its most crucial: entering the building by the rear.
The girl descended limping into the parking garage, which was much larger than she recalled. When her parents parked their car they parked in a designated place (11E) near the elevators; only vaguely had the girl a sense of the vastness of the underground space, which was but partially filled with vehicles. An odor of damp concrete made her nostrils pinch for it was distressing to her, to realize (as she’d never realized before, in the company of adults) that in the parking garage she was underground.
She could not locate the parking space for 11E but managed despite her now-swollen ankle to limp to a flight of concrete steps, that led in one direction to the laundry machines and in the other direction to the elevators; unfortunately the elevator her parents usually used was shut down, and a sign affixed to its door—UNDER REPAIR. So the girl had no choice but to take the freight elevator instead.
Never in her life had M__ stepped into the freight elevator before! Neither with Momma nor with Daddy, she was sure.
In the freight elevator were several other passengers who looked vaguely familiar to M__ though she did not know their names. A plump girl of about fifteen with shiny chestnut bangs that fell to her eyebrows noted the girl’s swollen ankle with sympathy. She asked the girl which floor did she want?—she would press the button for her. M__ told her eleven, thank you.
Others in the elevator were headed for floors three, seven, twelve, fifteen.
Fleetingly it crossed the girl’s mind that to exit the elevator onto any one of these floors, or onto any other floor in the building, would be to enter a new and unknown life. But she was too young, and too fearful, to pursue such a thought to the next logical level.
The freight elevator was at least twice the size of the usual elevator and its floor was scuffed and stained. One of the walls was covered in an oil-stained tarpaulin. There was a disagreeable odor here of bodies crammed together, stale air and grime. One of the passengers was a tall lanky boy with a blemished face who stood apart from the others, with a bicycle gripped in his big-knuckled hands. Another was a prune-faced middle-aged woman who frowned at M__ as if she disapproved of unaccompanied children in public places. The plump girl with the shiny bangs was oppressively friendly, however: she asked if M__ was “Molly”—(in fact M__ was not “Molly” but her name resembled “Molly” near enough, she did not think that a correction was necessary)—and she asked how M__’s mother was, after her surgery? Was she making a steady recovery?
In dismay M__ stared and blinked at the smiling plump girl. She had no idea how to reply to these questions. Had her mother had surgery, and she hadn’t been told? Or was the plump girl confusing her with another girl who lived on the eleventh floor? Seeing her confusion the plump girl said, “That’s the good thing about being little, upsetting things are kept from you to protect you. When I was a little girl our dog Lulu disappeared and for a long time when I called for her or went to look for her my family would say that Lulu was ‘sleeping’ in some quiet place and did not want to be wakened, or that Lulu was ‘visiting’ Grandma, until finally when I was older one day I said to them, ‘Lulu is dead, isn’t she?’—and they laughed at me saying they wondered how long it would take me to realize it. For Lulu had been hit by a truck in the street and killed, and they’d kept it a secret from me for three years.” The plump girl laughed bitterly in a way that chilled M__’s heart for she had wanted Lulu to be alive somewhere after all.
The plump girl persisted: “If your mother had surgery, they wouldn’t tell you probably. And if she died they would tell you ‘Your mommy went away’—somewhere. Wait and see, Molly.”
M__ was shocked to hear these terrible things, so matter-of-factly uttered. Even the name Molly sounded now like mockery in the plump girl’s mouth. The girl with the shiny bangs was not her friend after all but one of those whom M__’s mother had cautioned her to avoid.
M__’s mother had often warned her not to speak to strangers on her way to school, and on her way home from school; not to get into the elevator if there were “suspicious” people in it, and particularly if there was just one person, and that person a “man or a boy.” Usually this was not a problem for when M__ went to school she was in the company of other schoolchildren from the building, of various grades and ages; but today, returning alone at an odd time, with her reddened, swollen ankle, and entering not through the front entrance but through the parking garage, she had not glimpsed anyone else from school. She’d had no choice but to get into the freight elevator unaccompanied. All this she would explain to her mother with the hope not to be scolded.
Fortunately, by the eleventh floor most of the other passengers had left the elevator. Here, the plump girl helped M__ out though she herself was headed for a higher floor. “You’re sure that you can get to your apartment, Molly?” the girl asked, and M__ insisted, yes. She was sure.
What a relief, the elevator door shut and the plump smiling girl with the shiny bangs was spirited away.
And yet, the door to apartment 11E was not where M__ recalled. Usually it was within sight of the elevator as soon as she stepped out. In her confused state M__ was failing to realize that she’d taken the freight elevator and not the usual elevator to the eleventh floor and so she was in an unfamiliar place.
Here the interior lighting seemed dimmer, less certain. The gunmetal-gray carpet was gritty underfoot as if dirt
or sand had been tracked inside. And was the building trembling? In windstorms sometimes you could feel the building actually shudder and sway; the girl’s father had said that the building had been “modernized” to accommodate an earthquake, if the earthquake wasn’t too powerful.
What was too poweful?—the girl had asked timidly.
That’s what we will find out, the girl’s father said cheerfully.
Past doors 11J and 11G the girl limped along on her swollen ankle which pulsed with pain like a rebuke. How silly, how silly—stumbling into a crack in the sidewalk! She hoped that her mother would not scold her for being silly, as she sometimes did.
But no: Momma would feel sorry for her. Seeing how she’d hurt herself, how red and swollen her (left) ankle was, while her (right) ankle was a normal size. M__’s eyes stung with tears at the thought of her mother seeing how she’d injured herself, how she’d endured pain stoically making her way home. Let Momma kiss where it hurts and make it well. Poor baby!
At last, M___ was approaching 11E. One of their neighbors appeared to be having a party, a portable coatrack was in the corridor, packed with coats and jackets; a door was open, voices could be heard from inside. On the walls were framed MoMA posters of well-known works of art by Picasso, Braque, Klee, Kandinsky, Munch but the reproductions were exaggerated and mawkish, not at all beautiful, like scribbles in art class which the girl herself had been encouraged to try with Crayolas and colored chalks.
Here was a surprise—the door to 11E was ajar. The party was at her apartment . . .
Her parents must have planned a party without telling her. Often at Christmas they gave what was called an open house. Though it might as easily have been on New Year’s Day, Thanksgiving, Easter. (Was today the girl’s birthday? Could this be a surprise party for her eleventh birthday? She was certain, today was not her birthday.)
The (Other) You Page 4