by Anna Monardo
Christopher tossed the camisole, went back to his drafting table, and in a small brand-new sketchbook began to answer every one of Denise Wojciekowski’s questions. He answered the way he knew how—he drew pictures. If she wanted to know everything about him, here he was, in black on white.
THE DRAWING went very fast once he got started. By ten-thirty, he’d completed his answers, filled the sketchbook with precise drawings, labeled clearly, as when he illustrated science journals. YOUR BEST SKILL? A detailed cross-section of an eyeball labeled Observation. Then a drawing of his hand holding a pencil. I draw well. DRUG USE? He drew an orange tree, Vitamin C daily. Then a drawing of a marijuana plant, 1969–1977, occasional use. REASONS FOR WANTING TO BE CONSIDERED AS A DONOR? He drew the first image that came to mind, a detailed drawing of the barren cliffs of Canyon de Chelly, in Arizona, where he and Nora had driven around a few summers ago; under the drawing of the canyon he wrote Existential Abyss (after looking up the spellings in the dictionary).
Nora still wasn’t home. No hurry to take the plants out of the tub. He left the loft, went down onto the street. Pay phone, phone card. 1–800–CALL–DENISE. The surprise this time was that she didn’t sound angry about getting a call pretty late on Saturday night.
“Hi, this is Christopher. We met last week.”
“Yes. Sampietro. I’m glad you called, actually.” Actually. For a change. “I have information,” she said, “that might be of interest to you. I had some bad news this week. One candidate in the six-month wait, it turns out he wasn’t as clean as he’d said. There was some pretty serious diabetes in his background. He never told me.”
“He lied?” Christopher asked.
“I think he didn’t know himself. But it’s cost me time and money. The other candidate’s sample is up for retest in four weeks, but if you’d like to do an application, I’d consider you.” Silence. “Or maybe you were calling to say you aren’t interested?”
“I just spent four solid hours filling out your damn application.” This made her laugh, so he laughed, too. Then, again, silence. Christopher held it for a long moment, but this time he couldn’t get her to talk. “Well, I guess I’ve got this questionnaire.”
“Please, be thorough, or it’s wasting my time and yours.” Bitch. “Hello?”
“Yeah, I’m here,” he said. “Okay. I don’t want to put this application in the mail. I’ll bring it to you at The Diner. Your same break, this coming Thursday.”
“I’m off this Thursday. This week I work Wednesday.”
“I’ll be there on Wednesday, then. Six o’clock.” He hung up before Denise had a chance to hang up on him. What have I done?
All he knew was that he had to see Denise Wojciekowski again. He could have put his sketchbook of answers in the mail. But he wanted to see her. To see her.
I’m falling in love, he told himself. He didn’t know what else to call this feeling. He hadn’t had it quite like this before, ever. With Nora, it had been all body, the need to touch and be in the room with her, always. This was different. Christopher just wanted to see this person again, whoever she was, and hear what she had to say to him.
I’m in love with an unattractive woman who’s in love with her dead husband. Christopher wanted to call up Piper and tell him how weird life was. But Piper would probably be home watching Saturday Night Live with his oldest son, Pierre, and waiting for his one and only wife to come home from her nurse job so he could kiss her.
THE NEXT MORNING, when Christopher woke up, he was alone in the bed. He walked out into the living room and found Nora asleep on the couch. He stood over her, watched her pale, deep eyelids flutter. She was awake. “Sweetie,” he said, “I’d like to make a nice dinner for you tonight. Okay? Maybe you want to call your brother to join us?”
“You call him.” Nora buried her face in the black tweed of the back of the couch.
Fine. Be that way. At least Christopher knew he’d done what he could to make things right between them.
He spent all day cooking and resisting the strong urge to go down to the street to call Denise. What did Denise do on a Sunday afternoon in October? In the city, the weather was cool and sweet, perfect for going out to brunch and walking the streets. What was it like in Nyack? Was the sun shining on Denise? Was she chilly?
“What’re you cooking?” Kevin asked when Christopher called to invite him over.
“Simple. Something even you could cook.”
“Give me a break, Sampietro. I out-cook you every time.”
“This time it’s all-American family dinner. Meat loaf, mashed potatoes, carrots.” Did Denise make meat loaf for herself at home, or did she just order it when she ate out? Christopher was following a recipe for a veal meat loaf stuffed with red peppers. He spent a long time trying to replicate the eggplant mashed potatoes he and Nora had had one night at Union Square Cafe. Then his favorite carrots, sautéed with vinegar. He had to go out three different times to buy ingredients. Each time, he almost walked up to a pay phone.
Denise’s voice, her rudeness, it all did something to him that was maybe a little bit like being turned on. But not really. One thing for sure, Denise Wojciekowski knew how to hold his attention. She made him want to please her. Or was he just afraid of making her mad? Same thing. Whatever, it felt good. It made him ultra-awake.
Christopher knew the eggplant mashed potatoes had had some kind of Asian thing going on in them, so he grated ginger and whisked in a little soy sauce. The mashed potatoes fluffed up perfectly—but why wouldn’t they, with a whole stick of sweet butter? Plus, he’d gone out for heavy cream and whipped that in, too. Would Denise like this dinner, or would she be turned off by all the spices? Maybe he should have kept it simpler. Christopher wondered if Denise had high cholesterol.
FOR HIS SECOND MEETING with Denise, Christopher got to The Diner five minutes early, thereby, he believed, capturing the moral high ground. Good. A part of him felt smug, but he also hoped that Denise would be pleased with him for not being late this time. Not sure how else to categorize what was happening to him, Christopher decided to believe that maybe he was beginning his first extramarital affair.
A few minutes past six, a waitress skated over to his booth. “Christopher?”
“Yes.”
“Phone call for you. Up front.”
Holy God. Nora! She found out. He rushed to the phone, hoping that if Nora was calling it was for an emergency, that she wasn’t just calling to say she was leaving him. “Hello?” he demanded. “Hello?”
“Yeah,” Denise said. “Listen. Christopher?”
“Yes.”
“Good. I just wanted to make sure it’s you.” A pause, and he knew that her weary smile was slipping into place. “You didn’t give me a chance to finish talking the other night on the phone, and I didn’t have a number to call you back. We’re closing the magazine tonight. I have no time to leave the building or take a break.”
“Oh.” He unzipped his leather jacket. “You didn’t tell me.”
“You hung up on me,” she said.
She was always right. Another woman who could make him feel that, no matter what he did, he was wrong. “What should I do with my questionnaire?” Shit. It’s in my bag, in the booth. What if someone took it? “I want you to have it. I did all the work.”
“Drop it off downstairs. There’s a desk in the lobby where they can hold it.”
“No. No, Denise, sorry, I can’t do that. No.” Christopher was standing at the window of the restaurant looking out on Sixth Avenue, watching a police car rushing uptown through webs of traffic. “I can’t leave it. I need to put it right into your hands.”
“Well, I can’t leave this desk. I don’t even have time—”
“Yeah, I understand. I just can’t come to that building.”
“Okay.” She sighed, displeased. “Let’s see.”
I’ll do anything, but don’t make me come there, to where my wife’s friend works. “Hmm, Denise. When you called here, did yo
u happen to give the waitress my name?”
“Just your first name. Relax. Listen. Do this. FedEx it to my house, not the P.O. box. I’ll get it in a day or two. Here, write down my address.”
“I don’t have paper.”
“Christopher, you’re going to have to help me a little here.” She was speaking now to a child, but already the waitress was handing him a piece of paper. She’d been watching him, probably listening, too.
“Okay,” he said in a lowered voice. “Where do you live? I got paper.”
“My last name is spelled W-O-J-C-I-E-K-O-W-S-K-I.”
“What is that anyway, Polish? Czech?”
“Listen.” She really was at the end of her rope now. “I don’t have time—”
“Come on.” He smiled. “I’m writing.” She was a tough little number, wasn’t she? But it was like sixth grade. The meaner she was to him, the more he knew she liked him.
CHRISTOPHER HUNG up the phone and walked back to their booth. He’d already ordered a bacon cheeseburger. Now he had to eat it. With fries. Denise.
This was getting boring, this not seeing her. He needed to see her. No dinner break? If it was true…It was probably true. What a drag. Maybe he should have some dinner delivered to her. Not a burger, nothing hot. Maybe a tuna-salad plate?
He was eating more fries than burger. Nora had been making noises lately about wanting to become vegetarian. Good fries. He missed Denise. Just about this time almost a week ago, they’d been sitting here together. Now Diana Ross was singing “Baby Love,” loud, throughout the restaurant’s many speakers, and Christopher felt hidden in the noise.
The waitress came by. “I’ll have a Pepsi,” he told her.
“Coke?”
“Fine.” When she skated away, Christopher noticed a very young European couple at a table across the room. Two beautiful people with shearling jackets draped over their shoulders, good leather shoes, nice jeans. The shopping bags all around their chairs were from 47th St. Photo and Louis Vuitton. They’re Italian, Christopher figured. They were eating their hamburgers with knife and fork and studying a subway map. As if, with all the money they obviously had, they couldn’t take a cab. The woman looked up from the map with a girlish I’ve-got-a-great-idea expression on her gorgeous face. The guy was tall and leaned across the table to kiss her forehead. She sent a smooch across the table in his direction. Honeymoon, probably. Their four feet were all tangled together under the table. Christopher noticed they were both wearing rings that looked new, fresh.
Finishing his fries, Christopher began to feel really sorry for himself. Imagine beginning married life with all that freedom those Italians had, feeling utterly blameless.
Christopher and Nora had never had such a honeymoon. They did have ten days in Hawaii, his parents’ gift, embarrassingly expensive. Silly. It was the kind of trip his parents liked to take, starting with two nights in the Sheraton Waikiki. But on day one, Nora had sun-blistered the backs of her knees, falling asleep on a raft at high noon. Day three, they went to Maui, where they blew off his parents’ reservations at another chain hotel. Instead, they found a small rental shack, more their style. But the bugs in the room were way too big. So they moved to a condo, where the air conditioning broke down. Maui, where they had basically no sex at all. Because of the sunburn, bugs, heat. And because the two of them were totally weirded out.
Nora was wrapped up all the time in white cotton clothes and wet cloths. She planted herself under a palm tree and read some long Russian novel. Christopher could remember the exact pitch of his loneliness—like when he’d gone to camp with an older cousin, and none of the older boys would include Christopher in their games. A sick-in-the-stomach despair. A call-my-mother-to-come-get-me kind of loneliness. At dinner their first night on the grounds of the condo, they met a couple from San Francisco—two art historians, guys in their fifties, who were interested in asking Christopher all kinds of questions about his art and the New York galleries, and about the time he and Nora had spent in France. For a couple days, Christopher hung out on the beach with them while Nora read. But then the one guy put his hand right on Christopher’s leg, his thigh, while the other guy was swimming—it really pissed Christopher off, because he figured it was a competition between the two of them to see who could seduce the straight guy on his honeymoon—so Christopher just stayed under the palm tree with Nora, waiting for her to talk to him. Now, looking back, he realized that during those days both he and Nora had been in shock. They never relaxed until the flights back home. From Waikiki to L.A., on a big double-decker jet. They sat upstairs in the lounge and drank a lot and laughed about how funny it was going to be when they told their friends the story of their honeymoon: sunburn, propositions, broken AC, bugs. God, he could still remember how good it was to see Nora laughing again after so long. But that was just because the mai tais on the plane were free. His parents had popped for first-class tickets.
When they got off the plane in New York that rainy, cold early-December day, with leis around their necks, still laughing drunk, not hungover yet, a couple of their friends were there to meet them. Somebody had brought copies of the tiny wedding announcement that had made it into the Times the weekend before (apparently, Nora’s father, that loser, had better investment connections than even she had realized; they had submitted the announcement just as a joke). Christopher remembered overhearing one of Nora’s friends teasing her, “If you weren’t my friend, I’d hate you! You and your damn perfect life.”
SITTING IN THE DINER, running a finger around his plate, then licking salt and ketchup off his finger, Christopher remembered all of this. Sometimes he and Nora managed to have so much loveliness between them, just like those pretty Italians had now.
Nora. Nora.
He was trying to clean the ketchup out from under his fingernail, running it along the edge of a tooth, when it occurred to him in a way it never had before that maybe the damage between Nora and himself was, by now, too bad to be fixed. The waitress had just poured him more ice water, and when he drank it, there was pain in his chest. A hollow that filled up with arrows. “Check, please,” he told the waitress.
Denise. He had to talk to Denise. He had to talk to Denise now. At the pay phone, he dialed the phone-card access number, then Denise’s Nyack number. By now he knew the tunes by heart, two little ten-note songs. Then the fourteen-note grand march of his card number and his PIN (R-O-A-N, NORA turned inside out). All those digits, memorized. Lifeline. Christopher was going to leave Denise a message, he was going to tell her things. He pretty much knew exactly what he wanted to say.
But he didn’t know how to say it. So he listened to Denise’s brief, terse message, and then he hung up without saying a word.
CHAPTER 14 :
THE YEAR BEFORE AND SEPTEMBER
1989
By now Christopher was following Denise’s instructions in all things. She had told him to mail his completed questionnaire, wait seven business days, and then call her, either first thing in the morning—between seven o’clock and eight-thirty—or at noon, sharp. She would not answer the phone at any other times.
On the seventh business day after the mailing, a Monday, Christopher was wide awake before eight-fifteen, and Nora was out of the loft. He could have called Denise during the early-morning time slot, but he liked the idea of keeping her waiting a bit.
He made coffee. He took out the trash, did a load of laundry. In the freezer, he found a small pork roast, took it out to defrost, and prepared a lime marinade. He pretended it was one of those days a few years back, before all the baby fighting began, and there was no question: his wife would be coming home from work at the end of the day, and they would have a good dinner together, piddle around in the loft, eventually end up sitting together on the big couch to talk and cuddle a while before getting into bed, where they’d roll up against each other, and turn in to each other, and maybe even make love.
That used to be my life. Christopher couldn’t remember th
e last time he and Nora had had a night like that.
By eleven-thirty that Monday morning, he was using the small attachment on the vacuum to get cat hairs out of the sofa cushions. He was watching the clock, could hardly wait to have a real talk with Denise. To sit on his couch and have a conversation. All these sidewalk talks on pay phones, it wasn’t working. He needed to know more—like, why was he doing this? If Denise would let him explain it to her, maybe he could explain it to himself.
At noon, sharp, Christopher sat down with the wine-red phone and began punching in Denise’s number. Halfway through, he remembered to use his calling card. Jesus! What if the call had shown up on the phone bill and Nora had seen it? What the hell were you doing at home on a Monday morning? Why weren’t you at the studio? He could see how easily people got caught having affairs. Denise answered immediately.
“Hi, Denise. It’s Christopher Sampietro.”
“Yeah,” she said, “I figured.”
“Listen—” they both said at the same time. He laughed, she smiled—he just knew she was smiling. Denise began again: “I need to talk with you. I’m going to be completely frank, and I hope you don’t mind.”
Shit. Was he in trouble? He said, “Well, I was hoping—”
“I got your sketches, Christopher. Your work is, well, you’re very good.”
“Thanks, Denise. Thank you.” He looked out over the shiny wood floors of the just-cleaned loft, and he felt proud. But confused. Was he in trouble?
“Yeah, the art here is a nice touch. No one else thought of it, and it’s so obvious. I mean, I’m looking for an artist, a visual person. But I’m just going to say this—”
What?
“—I don’t understand why you want to do this with me. I mean—”