Lillian Boxfish Takes a Walk

by Kathleen Rooney

  If I don’t take his hand, then I am what he says I am, and he wins. If I do, then I’m only doing it to prove something and the encounter is just about me; he remains hidden behind his curtain of contempt.

  But that is his right, I suppose.

  And I hate to lose.

  I step forward with a smile. “All right, Jason,” I say. “Today is as good a day to die as any. Happy New Year.”

  “Holy shit!” he says. “Nancy’s a fucking samurai!”

  “Lillian!”

  It’s Wendy, who’s caught sight of me and rushed over. “I can’t believe you came!” she says. “I’m so glad you made it!”

  Jason cries out and throws up his hands in mock frustration, playing to an imaginary crowd that’s cheering him on. “Saved by the bell, Nancy!” he says.

  Wendy glares at him, takes my arm with one hand and my parcels with the other, and steers me away. “Come on,” she says. “Let’s get you over here among people who can appreciate you.”

  She leads me along a wall of boarded-up windows to an enormous table of unfinished wood, nicked and paint-stained. She’s speaking but I don’t catch what she says; she’s already begun to fix me a drink when I realize my right hand is still extended, chilled by the lack of what it never touched. I let it fall to my side.

  Wendy leans toward me in the festive din of the year’s final hour. “I hope you’ll forgive me for being a bad hostess,” she says. “I didn’t realize you were here.”

  “That’s all right,” I say. “It’s a busy scene.”

  “I’m sorry about Jason,” she says. “He’s really angry.”

  She is wearing a skinny black tie over her usual white top. It looks nice.

  “I’m sure he has his reasons,” I say.

  “I guess he does.” She pulls out a chair. “Here, have a seat. We can just drape your coat—which is fabulous, by the way—right over the back.”

  I sit, and take the cup she hands me. The mink brushes the base of my neck, like a shy pet I’m sheltering.

  Wendy sits next to me, opening the bags I brought, withdrawing the potato chips and mazapan that C. J. sold me, brightening when she sees the candy, clutching it with both hands like a thrilled child. “I love these things!” she says. As I’d guessed she would.

  Her fingers can’t manage the knots that bind the amaryllis, and all her sharp blades are in the kitchen, but I don’t let her leave, knowing that if she goes back there it’ll be past midnight before I see her again. I pass her the Swiss Army Knife that I keep in my purse—the real thing, a 1961 model, not the upmarket renditions that junior executives affecting rugged resourcefulness have taken lately to carrying—and she uses it with ease and skill.

  A few grains of soil have fallen between the pot and its cellophane shroud, but not many. Wendy peels the wrapping away, then looks up with curious eyes.

  “Hope you like dirt!” I say.

  She laughs. “Is it a bulb?”

  “Dutch amaryllis, I’m told. If it turns out to be cannabis instead, I trust you’ll forget who gave it to you.”

  “Amaryllis is a lily, right?” she says. “Lilies from Lillian! I can’t wait for it to sprout. It’ll remind us of you every day!”

  I think—but do not say—that it puts me in mind of a different Lily, my granddaughter, who’s a far more apropos analogue: a green shoot rather than a brown husk. Instead I just smile.

  “Where did you find all this great stuff?” Wendy asks, placing the pot at the table’s center amid empty bottles and abandoned cups, then opening the mazapan. “You must have been running around all afternoon.”

  “I made one stop,” I say. “About fifteen minutes ago. At that Filipino grocer and florist on Greenwich, just south of Jackson Square. Do you know it?”

  She shakes her head. “I walk by there all the time, but I don’t think I do.”

  “The young man who works there, C. J., is a smart cookie and a class act. The bulb was his idea. If it gives you any trouble, he’ll sort things out.”

  Wendy is aglow with gratitude, but also scattered, betraying every good host’s concerns: new arrivals to be welcomed, refreshments to be refreshed, oddball guests to be moored with companionable others so she can attend to her duties.

  “Don’t let me ensnare you,” I say. “If I keep monopolizing your time I’m afraid I’ll get indicted for unfair trade practices. I fully expected to be a demographic outlier at this shindig by a solid half-century, so there’s no need to fuss over me at others’ expense.”

  “But I’m so thrilled you’re here!” says Wendy. “I want to introduce you to everyone, so they can all see how great you are.”

  I can tell she means it, but even adjusted for drunkenness, her smile shows melancholy and worry out of proportion to the circumstances of an old woman’s surprise arrival.

  I peek at my watch: 11:20. “Well, nuts,” I say. “I am, I fear, unequal to your ambitions. It’s hours past my usual bedtime. I’d settle for an audience with that husband of yours, though. I admired his paintings on the way in and now I’d like to meet him.”

  “Ah, Peter,” she says, looking away, looking at the crowd, looking but not really looking. “That’s a good question.”

  I follow her gaze and scan the room, taking it all in for the first time. Noticing things I hadn’t before. The atmosphere of clandestine liberty. Bodies dancing and slouching and clustering in strange combinations. The faces: open and vibrant, brooding and doomed. I notice that some of the women are wearing thick foundation, heavy eyeliner, prominent rouge. Then I notice that they aren’t women.

  “Peter’s not really your husband,” I say, “is he?”

  “Ha,” says Wendy. She actually says ha, like someone in a comic strip. “You caught me. Peter and I aren’t married. We’re not even involved. We’re friends, really good friends, who wanted to live together. We’re both artists, and it’s cheaper this way.” She shakes her head, frustrated. “That makes it sound like convenience. It’s not only that. We’re a team. We’re just not a couple. Not in what I guess you’d call the regular way.”

  “You don’t have sex.”

  She smiles, and—I think; it’s hard to tell in this light—blushes. “Not with each other, no,” she says.

  For an instant I feel as if I’d been fooled, and then as if I’d been foolish—foolish to think I might have a place in Wendy’s world, a world I’ve sentimentalized as a carefree bohemian carnival. I have been presumptuous. As is my wont. As I made a career of doing.

  But when I’ve regained my footing, I find that this is not so strange to me.

  “To be perfectly honest,” I say, “I’m not sure how regular the regular way ever gets. These arrangements are hard to explain. But I’m your friend, so I’d like to hear more. Maybe we can talk about it sometime, if you want to. For now, though, I just have one question: Why did you tell me in the first place that you’re married?”

  “Lillian, I’m sorry about that,” says Wendy, picking up another mazapan with her black-nail-polished hand and nervously breaking it into chunks. “I say it sometimes because it feels true. More true than anything else I can tell people, anyway. We live together, we love each other, but he’s not my boyfriend. If I say he is, then people want to know when we’re getting married. If I say he’s just a friend, then people think it’s weird, like it’s a problem, and they want to help me find my own place, or to set me up with some nice guy they know. And I don’t want that. I’m with Peter. It’s different, but it works for us. I feel like you get it, Lillian. But when I first met you, well, I didn’t really know you yet, and…”

  “You thought I’d disapprove?”

  “Yeah, I guess,” says Wendy. “I mean, I thought you might. I guess I didn’t think about it at all, really. It’s just the way I talk to older people. Gah, I’m sorry—that came out wrong!”

  “It’s all right,” I say, taking a sip of the pink punch: vodka and grapefruit juice and something else, powdery and fake-tasting, Kool-Aid
maybe. “There’s no sense in pretending otherwise. I’m really old.”

  “I just mean that I’m used to talking a certain way to my family back in Ohio,” says Wendy. “My folks and my grandparents. I can’t always trust people’s reactions. And I get tired of trying to explain to people who don’t want to understand.”

  “I suppose I was never quite so unconventional,” I say, “but I know what you mean. Suffice to say my family back home in the District of Columbia did not condone my Jazz Age enthusiasms.”

  “There’s Peter!” says Wendy, rising to wave and shout his name.

  Peter—whom I recognize at once from seeing his tiny face iterated across the poster-board downstairs—turns and walks over to us. He looks to be Wendy’s age, in his twenties, and extremely handsome, his dark blond hair swept up in a slight pompadour. He’s wearing a crisp white shirt, unbuttoned plungingly, with its sleeves rolled partway up, and his pants are black: tuxedo trousers with a red satin stripe up the side, no less stylish for looking as if they were stolen from the dry cleaning of a bellhop.

  Peter and Wendy. For the first time it occurs to me that they are accidental namesakes, with literary antecedents that are a perfect fit, right down to Peter’s tribe of lost boys. Maybe too perfect: It’s easy to imagine them embracing the coincidence as a role to play, a mask to hide behind. Yes, you’re right, we’re just the way you think we are. Now leave us alone.

  “Wendy!” Peter says, and pulls up a chair. “Is this Lillian Boxfish?”

  “The one and only,” I say. “I’ve heard so much about you. It’s a pleasure to finally meet you.”

  He glances over at Wendy and raises his eyebrows.

  “It’s okay,” says Wendy. “She knows our terrible secret.”

  “Ah,” says Peter, sitting down and sighing. “That’s a load off. I hate having to lie. Thanks for coming.”

  “Thank you for letting an old lady crash your party,” I say.

  “Oh please,” he says. “I like to hang out with all kinds of people. Most of our young friends act as if we’re the first ones who’ve ever tried to live our lives differently. It’s so easy for a kid to write off an old person—they can’t understand this, they’ve never felt that, they no longer feel anything, they don’t count anymore. I think it’s small-minded. I wish there were more people over sixty here, to tell you the truth.”

  “That makes one of us,” I say, and they both laugh. “If you want to turn down the stereo and organize a bridge tournament, please be my guest, but I can’t promise I’ll be yours.”

  “So,” says Peter, “Wendy tells me you used to be a veritable Emily Dickinson.”

  “Hmm,” I say. “You’re in the ballpark. I’ve never been a shut-in—at least not by choice—and I still write.”

  “Wherever do you find a quiet place to compose your verses, Lillian?”

  “There are no quiet places in New York, dollface,” I say. “You know that. But I write funny poems, and most humor starts from irritation. There’s plenty of that here.”

  “They say oysters need grit to make pearls,” says Peter. “Take this detritus, these obstacles, and make of them art.”

  “Better that than just a peevish oyster,” I say.

  Peter reaches for a mazapan, and I notice a tattoo—a tiny black anchor—on his inner right forearm.

  “Nice design,” I say, pointing. “Very nautical. Very classic.”

  “Thanks,” he says. “My dad worked on the docks when I was growing up in Baltimore. Loved—still loves—the sea. He won’t talk to me anymore. I never go back there, but I miss it. This was one of the ways I let myself say good-bye. But you don’t want to hear about all that sad crap. It’s New Year’s Eve!”

  “See, Peter? This is why Lillian is so great,” says Wendy.

  “Why? Because most geriatric types don’t care for tattoos?”

  “Kind of,” says Wendy. “I notice the way you notice things.”

  “Peter, maybe Wendy has told you,” I say, “but I spent a large part of my life writing advertising for R.H. Macy’s. There’s a surprising bit of trivia about their company logo that I think you’d enjoy knowing.”

  “The big red star?” says Peter, leaning in like a conspirator. “Do tell us, Lillian. Don’t hold back.”

  I play along, looking theatrically from side to side as if in search of enemy agents, but the gesture feels wrong: false, or forced, as if I’m humoring children who are humoring me. I feel my mood swing, helped along by the pink punch, which I seem to have drained my cup of.

  Peter and Wendy are kind, but I don’t belong here. If I’m still present at midnight for the countdown and the kissing, then they’ll want me to feel included, and that simply won’t work. If I could feel fairly certain of being ignored—just a weird old lady people watching in the corner—then that might be fine. But Peter and Wendy will be so concerned that I have a good time that I am certain I will only be a disappointment to them.

  “That star,” I say, “comes from a tattoo that Mr. R. H. Macy himself got at the age of fifteen. Back when he was a sailor. He worked on a whaling ship out of Nantucket, the Emily Morgan.”

  This fact now sits invisibly between us, satisfied with itself. Daring us to take it up, to make use of it. It’s impossible. Why did I tell them? What could Wendy and Peter possibly do with this information? With the news that an iconic red star recognized by every eye in the city—one that hung like a beacon over the best years of my life—was inked on the skin of a teenaged Quaker the same year that Queen Victoria took the throne? I’ve known it for more than a half a century, and I’m still not sure what to do with it myself.

  “No shit,” says Peter. “I had no idea that that’s where they got the logo.”

  We sit in companionable silence, contemplating distances and durations, the beginnings and the endings of things. That’s what I’m contemplating, at any rate.

  “Can you please,” says Peter, “please, please tell me the star was on his ass?”

  “Love to,” I say, “but can’t. It was on his hand.”

  “Dammit,” Peter says. “Well. Still a good story, Lillian.”

  And that, I figure, is as good a curtain line as we’re likely to find. “On that note,” I say, standing up, “I think I’d better be going.”

  “What?” says Wendy. “You just got here! Come on, stay.”

  “It’s less than a half hour to midnight,” says Peter. “At least ring in 1985 with us.”

  I hesitate, not because I’m reconsidering, but because I can’t find my balance. The floor under my feet and the table under my hands both seem to be swaying—like the deck of a whaling ship, I think, or maybe a prosperous dry-goods store, afloat somehow on the high seas—and adrift in opposite directions. For a moment I’m terrified that I’ll fall, a wet bag of splintered bone flung in the midst of everyone’s New Year. I must be having a stroke, or suffering some other profound bodily betrayal: the final catastrophe that I’ve been waiting for. Then I remember that it simply has been decades since I consumed this much liquor in an eight-hour stretch.

  I regain my poise. I conceal my distress.

  “Well, that’s just the thing,” I say. “It is nearly midnight. And I am notoriously terrible at ringing out the old and in the new. Always have been. Now, don’t misunderstand: You’re both just wonderful. And this is a great party. Now that I know where you live, and how close it is to my place—not even two miles—I’ll come visit again, if you’ll have me. But I have a long tradition of ending years in my bathrobe to uphold, and I’m cutting it awfully close.”

  “All right, Lillian,” says Peter. “I’m sure you know best. But we’ll miss you.”

  “You’ll let us get you a cab,” says Wendy, “won’t you?”

  Before I can answer, Peter adds, “Wendy’s right. The streets aren’t safe this late at night. You should stay off them.”

  “I appreciate your concern,” I say, and I do, although I also find it annoying. “But there’s no n
eed to get me a cab. As you young sophisticates probably already know, New Year’s Eve between 10:30 and midnight is the best time in the entire year to catch a taxi. I’ll just walk toward Penn Station and find something.”

  “No!” says Wendy. “Whatever you do, do not go by Penn Station. A lot of our friends have gotten mugged up there.”

  “Thank you, Wendy,” I say. “I am grateful for the warning. Thank you, Peter. I’ll be all right, believe me. I’ll see you again soon.”

  I put on my coat, give them each a hug, and weave semisteadily back down the art-filled hallway toward the freight elevator. As I walk out, the music on the stereo starts to affect me the way music only does when I’ve been drinking: I suddenly want to say I love this song to everything that comes on, and I start hearing messages that seem meant just for me. As I slide aside the elevator’s scissor door, a man’s pretty voice is crooning low, then singing high, something about how pretty girls make graves.

  I am not a girl anymore. I haven’t been one for a long, long time.

  Whenever “everyone” is doing something, I seek to avoid it. But whenever someone tells me not to do something, that thing has a way of becoming the only thing that I want to do.

  I leave the building and pull the metal door shut behind me. The soft clang of its closing comes back as an echo, ricocheting up and down the empty street.

  23

  The Best Technique

  On postcards it never rains. Our honeymoon was like a postcard.

  Our second ocean voyage was not like our honeymoon.

  It was more like a card with an appealing photo on the front—perhaps one hand-tinted in an age long gone: a hint that its rosy report is not quite current—but with a reverse scrawled with sprawling misgivings.

  Max and I departed for Italy on New Year’s Day 1955, just under twenty years after our first such trip together.

  I knew it was a luxury to take such a vacation. The voyage was a gift from his favorite aunt and uncle, who’d prospered in the import business, and who’d noticed that we seemed to need a little time away, a little perking up. By we they meant me.