A Stranger on the Planet

by Adam Schwartz

  Raymond laughed, tried to say something, but was overcome with more laughter.

  “What’s so amusing?” I asked.

  “‘How do I know?’ What is that supposed to mean?”

  “I’ve had sex. You haven’t. I mean, Rachel didn’t know she was a lesbian until she slept with me.”

  “Well, that explains it then,” he replied, collapsing into another paroxysm of laughter.

  “Raymond. Shut up. Stop laughing at me.”

  “Seth, how do you know that I’ve never had sex anyway?”

  “Because you told me you’ve never been in love.”

  “So? Have you been in love with every person you’ve had sex with?”

  “Well, have you had sex?”

  “You know, this is beginning to feel like a cross-examination. I don’t know why it even matters.”

  “Because you’ve been dishonest with me.”

  “When?”

  “When you told me you’ve never been in love. You knew I was talking about women.”

  He posture suddenly turned rigid.

  “No, Seth. You were talking about blind people. You couldn’t imagine a blind person as sexual. I’m sorry if you think I was being dishonest. But I really don’t think I’m responsible for your ignorance.”

  He swigged the last of his beer, then found his way to the door, leaving me alone.

  I DIDN’T TALK WITH RAYMOND FOR WEEKS. He didn’t knock on my door; I didn’t knock on his. When we both approached the building at the same time, I held the door open for him and he went by without a word. One day I walked past Sol’s and noticed him sitting at a table by the window. He was eating salami on rye. I stared at him until I was dizzy with hunger.

  I placed my order and proceeded through the line. In front of me a schoolboy, barely able to see over the counter, was testing the vocabulary of Sol’s Vietnamese.

  “Jap,” he said experimentally.

  “You chili dog!”

  “Jap! Jap!” he said more boldly.

  “You grape pop!”

  “Kung-fu!” he shouted, and leapt into a martial arts stance, drawing one hand behind his head and waving the other in front of him as if he were casting a spell.

  I ordered a root beer, but the juice man was so happy to see me that he called out, “Ya, jew-is!”

  Raymond, his chin stained with mustard, stood up abruptly, grabbed his cane, and angrily beat his way out, leaving a half-eaten sandwich. The Vietnamese watched him with open-mouthed amazement.

  ANGELA WASHBURN WAS NOT THE ONLY mother in the class, and all the other mothers banded together when one of the men, Tazama Sun, declared in a paper that landlords had the right not to rent apartments to women with children. “If I owned a building,” he said, “I wouldn’t allow no childrens. They noisy. They destroy the property. A man have a right to protect his investment.” Tazama Sun had slanted eyes, a pencil-line mustache, and was partial to leather jackets and gold chains. I guessed he was in his early forties.

  “Do you have childrens?” one of the women asked.

  “Hell, no. What do I want with babies?”

  “I know about men like you,” Yvette Woolfolk said, her arms crossed high on her chest. “You the type I warn my daughter about. Y’all go crazy if you suspect your lady even looking at another man, but when she’s pregnant with your baby, you out the door, yes you are.”

  “That’s right, that’s right,” some of the other mothers chimed in.

  Another woman objected. “Don’t say all mens is like that. I been married twenty years to the sweetest man before Jesus.”

  “I didn’t say all of them,” Yvette Woolfolk replied. “Just ones like Tarzan.”

  Tazama Sun smiled and rocked back in his chair, tracing the line of his mustache with a thumb and forefinger.

  Then one of the women looked at me. “How about you? How you treat your wife?”

  I said that I wasn’t married.

  “But you so polite!”

  “He real quiet, though.”

  “I bet he has himself lots of lady friends.”

  “How about it, Shapiro,” Daryl said. “How many lady friends you have?”

  I could feel my face turning bright red. Angela Washburn embraced her baby tightly and buried her face in his neck. I wanted to move to the back of the room, sit in the empty chair next to them, and tell her that I was in pain too.

  “He so quiet,” Daryl said, “you can hear a rat piss on cotton. But some ladies like that. Yes, they do. They like that a real lot.”

  I WAS EATING LUNCH at Sol’s when something outside excited all the Vietnamese. They raced out to the sidewalk for a better look. Through the window I saw Raymond jerking his head around like an angry and frightened marionette. I left my lunch and went outside. The Vietnamese were laughing uproariously. The laughter agitated Raymond even more. He was cursing and swinging his cane violently around his feet like an erratic compass needle. Pedestrians stepped around him. Realizing he had momentarily lost the language to find his way home, I walked over to him. “Raymond,” I said. He twisted around, his face in a commotion of fright and relief. We were silent for some seconds, all the words we could say to each other standing like a wall between us. Then, in my most intimate voice, I said, “Fifty-sixth and Stony Island. Fifty-sixth and Cornell. Cornell and Fifty-ffth. Cornell and Fifty-fourth. . . .”

  AFTER BEING ABSENT FOR A WEEK, Angela Washburn and her baby were waiting outside my office.

  “My baby been sick,” she said. She paused, then added, “Ain’t no one else I can leave him with.”

  The baby was resting on her shoulder, his eyes rheumy. I resisted an impulse to reach out and stroke his cheek.

  “Is he better now?”

  She looked me in the eye. “He all right,” she said softly.

  In my office, she read from a new composition. “Last winter after my baby was born we almost froze is the reason we got us a new apartment.” The baby reached out to me. His fingers, centimeters from my nose, plied the air as if he were practicing piano scales.

  I was on the verge of asking if they were warmer this winter. Is there no one else to stay with? Are you all alone, Angela? Is it just you and the baby? My palms were moist, and I could feel the blood rising in my neck, heating up my face. “Your trouble is caused by a faulty predicate. The linking verb ‘to be’ forms a sort of equation.”

  The baby wailed like a siren, his eyes screwed tightly shut, his forehead wrinkled from the strain. Don’t cry, don’t cry, I wanted to say, but these were not my words. Angela bounced him lightly on her lap, whispering in his ear, “Be cool, sugar. Be cool.” When he didn’t quiet down, she searched around in her purse, coming up empty-handed.

  “I left his bottle in the car.”

  “You can leave him here if you want to get it.”

  She gave me a frantic, flustered look.

  “Really. I can watch him.”

  She sat the baby down in the chair and went out. His wails became even louder. I waved and smiled at him, but to no avail. His face was a miniature portrait of agony and grief. I couldn’t resist any longer. I got down on my knees and brought my face close to his. His cries ebbed, like a balloon slowly expelling air. His back eyelashes were matted with tears. He stared at me with glistening, wondrous, slightly crossed eyes as the huge, complex landscape of my face loomed in front of him. He reached out and grabbed my nose, the sweet fingers of his other hand brushing over my features with a spidery grace, as he emitted breathy, satisfied sounds. I closed my eyes and the world changed tenses: I was keenly aware of living in the present, aware of every inch of my face, of every follicle and cell, of being defined, shaped, loved. I heard his mother’s footsteps coming down the hall. I knew I should open my eyes and stand up. But I didn’t move a muscle. Even when I knew she was standing in the doorway, watching her baby hold my face in his hands.

  PART

  TWO

  ORPHANS

  • 1987–1989 •

&nbs
p; On November 22, 1963, I turned seven years old and discovered a major fault line in my character. At approximately 1:15 the school principal, Mrs. Miller, charged into my classroom, crying out that the president had been shot. After a moment of shocked silence, I burst into laughter. Everyone turned to look at me. Then Wendy Feingold began laughing too, and so did Sven Bjornsson, and then Nina London joined in, and soon, like a contagion, all my classmates were convulsed with laughter. I felt exalted and criminal, pyromaniacal. I was notorious for my laugh, loud and honking, truly obnoxious—indeed, I had been sent to Mrs. Miller’s office three times that year because of it—but she and my teacher, Mrs. Carmichael, only looked stunned. School was let out for the afternoon. On the streets, adults were crying everywhere. Even the automobiles appeared dazed, moving at the slow-motion pace of a funeral procession. I saw an old black man in a fedora crying at the wheel of his Oldsmobile, and I wondered if I was still going to have my birthday party later that afternoon. We had invited ten boys in my class and ten of Sarah’s friends over to our apartment, and for weeks I had been anticipating the mayhem and presents, but when I arrived home, my mother was already there, sitting on the steps of our apartment building, rocking back and forth, her eyes bloodshot, a cigarette burning between her fingers. Unable to bear her sadness, I said that maybe it wasn’t really President Kennedy who had been shot. She looked at me quizzically. Maybe, I theorized, it was his twin brother, Tom.

  TWENTY-FVE YEARS LATER, I DID it again: I burst out laughing during a bout of emotional vertigo at the most inappropriate moment possible. Molly Quinn, the love of my life, was eight weeks pregnant, and we were meeting with a clergyperson about marrying us. Near the end of the interview, when the Unitarian minister asked me why I loved Molly, I became tongue-tied. Molly gave me an alarmed, disbelieving look, which froze me even more. Finally, unable to bear the silence any longer, I turned to Molly and said, “Excuse me, but can you tell me your name again?” and then exploded into peals of laughter.

  WE HAD MET THE YEAR BEFORE, in August 1987. I was in my rent-controlled apartment in Cambridge, watching a Red Sox game, when a woman called me up, introduced herself as Molly Quinn, and told me how much she loved my act after seeing me perform at a local comedy club.

  “Really?” I replied. I was a competent comic, not an inspired one. But in the 1980s, comedy clubs were all the rage, and even a mediocre comic like me could get regular bookings. When I was still living in Chicago, I had enrolled in stand-up comedy and improvisation classes at the Second City, mainly as a way to get out of Hyde Park and meet women. I began going to comedy clubs religiously, studying the more polished comics, and getting on stage at amateur nights. I spent three hours every day writing material for a comedy act. I liked how it was so immediately rewarding: I could figure out the structure of a joke or monologue and get a laugh on stage that same night, and it was so easy to reinvent myself this way. By February of 1986, I was earning more money doing stand-up on weekends than I received in my monthly paycheck from Martin Luther King State. In June of that year, Aaron Zelman, my soon-to-be brother-in-law, told me that a friend of his was vacating his rent-controlled apartment in Central Square in Cambridge and it was mine if I wanted it. Yes! Yes! Yes! I replied. My lifelong dream of living in Cambridge would finally come true.

  “Do you get many calls like this?” Molly asked.

  “Oh, sure, all the time. My phone never stops ringing. One of these days I’m going to get an unpublished number. I’ll just keep it in the drawer with my unpublished novels.”

  “You write novels too?”

  “No, no, it was just a line. Not a very good one, though, I’m afraid. But I am a writer.”

  “What do you write?” she asked.

  “Checks. But all of them are fiction.”

  Molly laughed politely, then said: “Look, I usually don’t do things like this, but I’d really love to buy you a drink.”

  I didn’t say anything for several seconds, as if this were something I really needed to think about, as if I might be better off spending another night alone in my apartment.

  “Well, I can understand if you’re not comfortable with this,” Molly said. “You really don’t know anything about me.”

  “What do you do?” I asked brightly.

  “I’m a lawyer for the state Ways and Means Committee.”

  “Ways and Means?”

  “Taxes.”

  “Oh, right, taxes!” I exclaimed, as if everything were suddenly clear to me.

  TWO NIGHTS LATER I MET MOLLY at a bar in Harvard Square. I showed up five minutes late by design, at 7:35, but I didn’t see anyone I thought might be Molly, or anyone I wanted to be Molly. I ordered a beer, wondering what type of woman would be attracted to my hapless comedy persona, especially if she was bold enough to call up a complete stranger and ask him out. I opened my act by telling the audience that just the other day I was standing behind a beautiful woman in line at the bakery. I badly wanted to strike up a conversation with her and rehearsed in my mind all the charming lines I knew, but I just couldn’t get the words out. When she was nearing the cash register, I finally piped up:“Excuse me, but do you mind if I ask for your number?” “Sure,” she said, and handed me the ticket she was holding.

  Eight o’clock. My bladder was the size of a Persian melon, but I was afraid to go to the bathroom. What if Molly just happened to show up while I was peeing? She’d think I had given up on her, and we would never meet. Just then I noticed a slightly built woman with a great mane of auburn hair that fared a rich red when it caught the light standing in the doorway. Molly! I was so stunned by her beauty that I could only stare dumbly at her. Seeing me, she crossed her hands over her heart and I waved. As she approached, I extended my hand, but she leaned forward and kissed me on the cheek.

  “Oh, Seth, thank God you’re still here. I had a meeting that went on and on and I was afraid you might have given up on me.”

  “Really, all this time I was afraid that you had given up on me. I’m so relieved that we have something in common.”

  She appeared a little perplexed, as if not sure whether I was trying to be funny or serious. I had to admit, I didn’t always know myself.

  After we sat down and ordered drinks, I excused myself to go to the bathroom. The bar adjoined a fancy Middle Eastern restaurant. Approaching the bathroom, I noticed my father and Hortense leaving their table and heading in my direction. I had not seen them in eight years, since Sarah’s graduation from Rutgers. I fed into the bathroom and hid in a stall. Since moving to Cambridge, I never left my apartment without expecting to run into my father— perhaps at a movie theater or a bookstore or maybe just crossing the street in Harvard Square. I was always aware of him, like some tune dimly playing in my head. Sitting on the toilet seat, holding my head in my hands, I thought: The one time I leave the house without expecting to see my father and I run into him. This had to mean something, but I was too flummoxed to figure it out. I stayed in the stall for ten minutes, just to be safe.

  When I returned to the table, Molly asked if I was all right.

  “Oh, I’m fine,” I said. “I just saw my father and stepmother, that’s all.”

  “Your family lives close by? How nice.”

  “No, see, the thing is I haven’t seen them in eight years, so I was hiding in the bathroom.”

  Her eyes widened with puzzlement, and I wondered why I simply hadn’t told her a small lie. I wouldn’t even have needed to lie; I could have just smiled and nodded my head.

  “It’s complicated,” I explained.

  “You didn’t even want to say hello?”

  “I’ve always loved my father, but his wife, Hortense, is another matter. She’s the stepmother from hell,” I said, adding an anxious laugh.

  She sipped her beer, then looked around the bar, as if an impostor Seth had returned from the bathroom and she was looking for the real one, the Seth she had conjured in her mind when she called me.

  “I could tell you
one of my cruel stepmother stories, but I’m afraid you wouldn’t believe me.”

  “Try me.”

  So I told her one of my best Hortense stories—about the time at Wellfeet when she refused to give me a clean plate at dinner until I ate all of my leftover jam from breakfast. I’d told this story so many times that it had a lacquered sheen to it, but as she listened, Molly’s eyes had a depth of sympathy that caught me off guard.

  “Oh, Seth, that is cruel.”

  “Do you know the meanest thing Hortense ever said to me?”

  “What?

  “She told me I would never have children,” I said, leaving out her theory that I was too much of a child to have my own children. “Can you believe that?”

  “Why would she say something like that?”

  “Who knows? We were having some dumb argument about money. I mean, I was only twenty years old. Who’s thinking about children at that age?”

  “I’m sure you’ll have children,” she said. “You’ll be a wonderful father.”

  “Thank you,” I said, feeling as if I had won an award I hadn’t applied for. “What about you? Are you close to your parents?”

  “I’m an orphan,” she replied, holding open two empty palms, as if to show me that she had nothing to hide, had nothing at all.

  “Oh, Molly, I don’t know what to say.”

  “That’s all right,” she told me, reaching for my hand, as if I was the one who needed comforting. “We’ve just met. You don’t need to say anything.”

  She told me that her mother had died when she was two and her father had died when she was twelve.

  “I can’t imagine how difficult that was.”

  She squeezed my hand, blinked away a tear, and said, “It still is.” She went on to tell me that she was raised by her aunt and uncle, who lived in the same North Cambridge neighborhood her parents had, and that her aunt and uncle’s household was large and loving. “All my cousins were like sisters to me. I’ve always wanted a big family myself,” she confided. I confessed to her that as a child I’d had fantasies that my true parents—a sane, rich, and loving couple—would show up one day and rescue me.