A Stranger on the Planet

by Adam Schwartz

  Rachel told me how the therapist had tried to regress them by instructing Rachel to lie down on Joan’s lap as her mother read her The Runaway Bunny. Rachel and I both laughed. Then Rachel began crying again.

  “The fucking thing was actually effective,” she said. “I felt loved and safe. I didn’t want to get up.”

  I had never felt so close to her, not when we had read Tolstoy to each other in bed every night as undergraduates, not when we went on our yearly vacations, staying up all night and discussing sex. I held her tightly as she cried, feeling an electric intimacy. How could she not be feeling the same thing? She kissed me good night, told me she loved me, and turned over to go to sleep. Thirty minutes later we were still wide awake; we had probably changed positions about fifty times, as if we were trying to figure out a secret handshake.

  “What are you thinking about?” Rachel finally asked.

  “About everything.”

  “Are you thinking you want to make love?”

  “Yes. Are you?”

  She studied me in the dim light and kissed me.

  “You know I’m in a relationship,” she said.

  “Is that a yes?”

  We kissed again; I ran my finger over her nightshirt, lightly grazing her nipple. She shuddered and squeezed my ass, then she hiked her legs up and removed her panties. “Seth, baby,” she said, “put your mouth on me.” My tongue traced only two or three arabesques before she came, bucking convulsively. Oh, Lord, how different this was from our nights together in Chicago, when I would kiss her all over her body—and not just in the usual places but on the arch of her foot, the rim of her ear, the back of her knee— feeling as if I were trying every light switch in a darkened house, all to no avail. Perhaps Lucinda, or some other woman, had found the light in her body; perhaps her body was buzzing with booze, longing, death, and reunion. She lifted herself on top of me.

  “Do you have any protection?” I asked.

  “No,” she said, and began to ride me.

  We locked into a powerful rhythm, our bodies moving back and forth in unison. I spent myself explosively, copiously.

  The next morning at ten we were awakened by one ring of the phone.

  “That’s Lucinda’s signal,” Rachel explained.

  I ran my tongue up and down the nape of her neck, pressing close so she could feel my yearning.

  “Wait fifteen or twenty minutes,” I said.

  “No, I have to call her right back. She’ll wonder if I don’t.”

  “Tell her you were in the shower.”

  “We don’t lie to each other.”

  I watched Rachel rise from the bed, enjoyed a brief glimpse of her beautifully arched back and rounded bottom before she covered herself with a robe and went into the kitchen to call Lucinda. I felt the pang of loneliness that sometimes struck me when I woke alone in my own bed. I waited for thirty minutes before I gave up hope that she was coming back.

  The day was busy with appointments with bankers, lawyers, realtors. In the evening we went through all of Joan’s belongings— diaries, bundles of old letters, photographs, childhood dolls and drawings. We discussed everything except the fact that we had become lovers again. The night before, I had dreamed of flooded plains, of lakes and rivers breaching their banks. Could this be a sign that she was pregnant? I wanted to tell her about my dream, wanted to ask her if she too thought it was a sign, if she was trying to become pregnant, perhaps acting on some impulse to beat back death by creating life. I had so many questions for her: Was last night going to change anything between us, especially if she was pregnant? Was it about us, about how intensely close we had become over the last two months, speaking for hours on the phone every night? Or was she simply consummating with me all the pent-up ardor she felt for Lucinda? Now that we were lovers again, I had become thoroughly self-conscious, totally strategic, aware of everything I couldn’t say.

  When we went to bed that night, I cupped her breast. Rachel removed my hand and repositioned it on her belly. She said that she just wanted me to hold her.

  “Did you tell Lucinda about us this morning?” I asked.

  “Tell her what?”

  “That we made love.”

  “No.”

  “Are you going to tell her?”

  “I don’t know.”

  I had an erection that wouldn’t go down. I kept shifting positions. I wanted to keep holding her, but the blood in my penis wouldn’t ebb. Finally, Rachel said, “Let me help.” She sat up beside me, put her hand inside my underpants, and began pumping away. She didn’t kiss me or lie next to me. Occasionally she smiled at me; once she yawned. This was an act of kindness, not love, something only someone like her could do for me—a close friend, a woman, a former lover. I suddenly felt isolated from her, isolated by muscles and blood, isolated by this reminder that our relationship had its limits. Cleaning myself off in the bathroom, I had to fight to keep from bursting into tears. When I returned to bed, Rachel leaned into me. I squeezed her hand, then rolled over to the far side of the bed.

  The phone woke us at eight the next morning, ringing three times before Rachel answered it. From the sound of her voice— surprised, then soft and affectionate—I knew it was Lucinda on the other end. I went into the kitchen. For two hours I drank coffee and read the paper. Maybe Lucinda was ending the relationship. Maybe she was telling Rachel that she couldn’t go on with the secrecy and adultery, not to mention the unprofessional nature of their relationship. Yes, Lucinda was ending the relationship, Rachel would be pregnant, and I would move from Chicago to California, and we would get married. I’d stay home with the baby, become a house husband. I was considering names for our child when Rachel finally came into the kitchen. I knew from one look at her face that none of this would come true. “What’s going on?” I asked. Rachel said that Lucinda had told her husband about their affair.

  “What’s going to happen now?”

  “They’re going to separate.”

  “I suppose that’s good news for you.”

  Rachel gave me a pained smile. “We’ll still have to keep things secret until after Lucinda comes up for tenure,” she said. “It’s going to be difficult.”

  “So, did you tell her about us?”

  “Why do you keep asking me that?” she snapped.

  “I thought you didn’t like lying to her,” I replied.

  I LEFT THE NEXT DAY. Looking out the window of the plane, I watched the topography of the country change like a time-lapse film of a flower blooming: The coastline and green hills became the Rockies, which leveled out to the Great Plains. My spirit gradually deflated as I gazed for hours at the patterned farmland of the Midwest and then at the tracts of suburbia. When my plane banged down on the runway in Chicago, it felt like a knock to my soul. Just as the shuttle van from the airport deposited me in front of my building, I saw Raymond coming out the door with his white cane.

  “Raymond. Hi.”

  When he heard my voice he turned around. “Oh, hi, Seth. Did you go visit Rachel for Thanksgiving?”

  “Well, her mother died. So I ended up going for a funeral.”

  “Oh, my condolences. But I’m sure Rachel was glad to have you with her.”

  “I don’t know. Rachel and I slept with each other. Now I’m very mixed up.”

  “I thought she had a serious girlfriend.”

  “She did. She does.”

  “So now she’s a lapsed lesbian?” Raymond laughed. He was the closest thing I had to a best friend in Chicago, but he always thought my problems were hilarious.

  “The sex was amazing. Better than any sex we used to have when she was my girlfriend.”

  “You want me to feel bad for you about this?”

  “No, but I mean how do you explain that?”

  “Do you know what Tennessee Williams said when he was asked about his sexuality?”

  “No. What?”

  Raymond smiled naughtily, then said in his best Blanche DuBois voice, “I’ve always
been rather fexible.”

  THE NEXT AFTERNOON RAYMOND KNOCKED on my door and asked me if I wanted to go to the revival house and see a John Wayne Western called The Searchers. I agreed to go when he said I wouldn’t have to annotate the movie for him. “I’ve seen it dozens of times,” he told me. “You’ll love it.”

  Not long into the movie, John Wayne’s brother and sister-in-law are massacred and their two young daughters kidnapped by Indians. John Wayne and some other cowboys go off to look for the girls. They find one of them raped and murdered and spend five years searching for the other one. Eventually they find her— she has grown up into Natalie Wood—during a raid on a Comanche camp. John Wayne raises his hand to kill her because she has become a wife of the Indian chief, but then he has a change of heart and rides home with her on his horse.

  I thought the movie was fine, but I didn’t love it, and I didn’t share my opinion because I knew Raymond, who had spent the movie leaning forward in his seat and holding his fist to his mouth, was strongly moved. I wasn’t in the mood to hear him explain everything I had failed to notice.

  Afterward, we went next door for a beer.

  “Isn’t that a beautiful story?” Raymond said.

  “Beautiful? Raymond, John Wayne spent five years on his horse looking for Natalie Wood, and then he almost scalped her because she was fucking an Indian.”

  “But at the last moment he was transformed by love.”

  “Oh, now you’re going to tell me that John Wayne really wants to sleep with his teenaged niece?”

  “No,” he replied, with a lascivious laugh. “He wants to sleep with his sister-in-law.”

  I recalled a subtle exchange of looks between John Wayne and the sister-in-law, and I knew that Raymond was right. How many times did he have to see the movie to catch that?

  “Seth,” Raymond continued, “couldn’t you see how ill at ease in the world John Wayne is? How he isolates himself from love and caring? But when he discovers Natalie Wood, he realizes his capacity for nurturing and love. She’s his best half and he finally becomes a whole person. That’s why it’s a beautiful story.”

  “Raymond, sometimes I wonder if you and I see the same movies.”

  “We see the same movies, Seth, but sometimes I wonder if you have any imagination.”

  “I have imagination, but I also know something about real life.”

  Raymond smiled beatifically. “You’re really threatened by me, aren’t you?”

  “What are you talking about?” I exploded.

  “You always have to claim you know more about life just because you’re sighted.”

  “Jesus, Raymond, who said anything about sight? I just think that sometimes you romanticize life. That story you told me about your grandmother, for instance. I think if you knew anything about the way people really love, you would know that your grandmother and her lover must have endured great pain. Two people who love each other don’t keep apart just because they’d rather imagine being together. I’ll tell you why your grandmother and her lover stayed together for so many years. Because the alternative was probably nothing—no romance, no intensity, nothing. And even if the price is extreme pain, most people would rather have pain than nothing.”

  “That’s just your interpretation.”

  “No, that’s my experience! Look, Raymond, I once had a relationship with a married woman. My lover was unhappy in her marriage, just like your grandmother. I pleaded with her to leave her husband for me, but she didn’t want to think of herself as the type of woman who would leave her husband for another man. But you know something? The more painful things were between us, the more inflamed our loving became. I remember one afternoon toward the end. We had been making love for hours in the July heat. Our bodies were plastered together with sweat. At that point the pain was realer than the love. But looking at our feet, I felt oddly detached. I realized we could end the relationship right then and spare ourselves more agony, but I didn’t. We couldn’t. And do you know why? Because the alternative would have been nothing. All she would have had was her bad marriage. And what would I have had? Nothing.”

  Raymond drew back.

  “Why did you tell me that story?”

  “What do you mean? You told me a story about love, and I told you one. That’s all.”

  Actually, the story was mostly made up. My affair with the married woman had lasted less than a week, but I had embellished it because I always felt so outmatched by Raymond in our discussions about love and movies.

  “I’ll tell you why. Because you’re so insecure. So you have to tell me all about your sweaty sexual adventures. But let me tell you something. I really feel sorry for you if this is the view of love your experience has given you.”

  SIXTY-THIRD AND KING DRIVE . Sixty-fourth and King Drive. Sixty-ffth and King Drive.

  For three blocks I frantically pressed down on the gas pedal, but my car only sputtered and wheezed until the life completely drained out of it at Sixty-ffth and King Drive. It was an arctic Chicago morning in December. Far down the deserted street, I could see the swaying lights of a bus. The windshield of my car was beginning to ice over. I bundled up in my coat and ran across the street to a coffee shop. The place was crowded and noisy; everyone stared furtively at the white boy wearing a necktie with cheeks the color of a Red Delicious apple. I called the emergency road service from the pay phone, then squeezed into the only free space at the counter. A man a few seats down from me tipped his cap and smiled as if I were an old, familiar friend. I stared straight ahead. On the wall facing me were portraits of a honey-haired, blue-eyed Jesus and an airbrushed Martin Luther King gazing out as if heaven were just beyond the horizon. Between the two pictures was a hand-printed sign warning the patrons not to curse when ladies were present.

  The only lady present was a stout, fireckled, cinnamon-colored woman working behind the counter. Her style was more Sunday-school teacher than waitress, and she wielded her coffeepot like a Bible.

  “Who was it lived in the land of Uz?” she asked the men at the counter, the pot poised above their heads.

  They all stared down into their plates.

  “You, Brother Jackson!” she said. “Don’t you know?”

  Mr. Jackson looked warily at the raised pot.

  “Noah?” he ventured.

  “No, it wasn’t no Noah,” she said, thumping the pot on the counter. “It was Job, a man of blameless and upright life.”

  She worked her way down the counter, pouring coffee and posing questions.

  “How many criminals was crucified alongside of Jesus?”

  “Two,” said one of the men. “One on his left, the other on his right.”

  “That’s better,” she said. “That’s better.”

  “What kind of easy questions y’all asking this morning, Sister Broadnax?” another man said. “Ask him what was the names of them two criminals.”

  “What names?” she replied, her eyes narrowing.

  “Don’t tell me you don’t know.”

  “Well, what was they?” she demanded impatiently.

  “Leroy and Marvin.”

  The whole counter exploded in laughter. I smiled into my coffee, having become invisible, except to the man three seats away, who had been staring at me from the moment I sat down. When the seat beside me became free, he moved over and sat down on it. I was suddenly enveloped in an odor of oil and sweat. His face was sprinkled with white stubble, his down vest and overalls spotted with dark, shiny stains.

  “Morning,” he said.

  “Morning.”

  “Your name is Seth, right?”

  “Yes. . . .”

  “You don’t remember me. My daughter introduced us at the graduation last spring.”

  “Yes, now I remember. You’re Naomi Freeman’s father. I’m sorry. I didn’t recognize you.”

  “Well, I’m not wearing my Sunday best today. I just got off work. The cold’s froze up everybody’s boilers. I don’t usually work nights, but fol
ks has to have heat. Oh, Mrs. Broadnax,” he said to the woman behind the counter, “this boy here went to the divinity school with my daughter.”

  “You a preacher?” she asked me.

  “Well, not exactly. . . .”

  “You don’t have a church?”

  “No.”

  “Don’t worry, honey. You still young. You’ll get yourself a church soon enough.”

  There were some scattered amens from the men at the counter.

  “We all belong to the Zion Baptist Church,” Mr. Freeman explained. “Mrs. Broadnax is a deacon. She keeps us honest every morning.”

  “So I’ve noticed.”

  She held the pot above my head. “More coffee, Reverend?”

  RAYMOND AND IAGREED NOT TO go to the movies anymore. “We’re both too emotional for it,” he said. He was over at my apartment, and I volunteered to go down the block for some beer.

  “Rachel called just after you left,” Raymond said when I got back.

  My heart jumped; I hadn’t heard from her since I had left California, close to a month ago. “Do you mind if I call her back?”

  “Of course not.”

  I went into the bedroom and called her.

  “You never told me Raymond was gay,” she said.

  “Raymond? Gay? Are you sure?”

  “Of course he is, Seth.”

  “Did he tell you he was?”

  “No, but I can just tell.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Seth, sweetie, he may be blind, but you’re deaf.”

  I told her I’d call her back later. I knew that she was right, had probably known it all along, but hadn’t been able to assimilate the fact into my world. Perhaps Raymond was right: I didn’t have any imagination, certainly not the type of imagination I needed to negotiate my way through life.

  I returned to the living room. “Raymond,” I said, laughing, “Rachel thinks you’re gay.”

  “Well, she ought to know, shouldn’t she?” He crossed his legs and smiled.

  “How come you never told me?”

  “I thought you knew.”

  “How was I supposed to know?” Then, in exasperation, I added, “How do you know? You’ve never had sex!”