by Mary Morris
The waiter signals that our lamb is done and I pull away, leading Manuel back to our table. The lamb looks sinewy and underfed, more like a roadkill than a meal. I poke it with my fork, not at all sure I can eat. “Do you think,” I ask Manuel hesitantly, “that they know about what happened between me and Isabel?”
Manuel picks up his fork, sampling his lamb. “Probably,” he says. “I think they must.”
“I’m afraid,” I tell him, “I really am.” I breathe a deep sigh, thinking Lydia was right. I was stupid to come back. “But will they let me go?” I ask, truly frightened for the first time.
He smiles. “Oh, I’m pretty sure they will. They are just trying to teach you a lesson.” He takes a bite, though he does not seem very interested in the meal.
“What has happened to her?” I ask him. “Why hasn’t she ever written to me?”
“Oh, my guess is that she wants to put it all behind her. She is just living her life.” I am shaking my head and he touches my cheek. “You know,” he says, “I still want you. Nothing has changed.” He puts down his fork. “Come,” he says, “dance with me again.”
The music is a pretty good salsa and Manuel definitely knows the beat. I am less sure of it, but he is the kind of dancer who could guide a moose around a dance floor. His feet slide and manage to bring me along, and whenever I miss a step, he fills it in for me. He can switch his samba to a rumba to the mambo without skipping a beat. Todd can dance American-style from the sixties, where you never touch, but Manuel knows how to guide a woman along the floor. We pause only for another round of daiquiris while the kids at the bar put on a new tape and then we rumba around the roof deck again.
It is late when Manuel walks me to my room. My muscles ache from the dancing and my head spins from the daiquiris, but Manuel wants to come inside my room. I tell him no, that I want him to go home, but he wants to come inside. We have both had too much to drink, he more than I, but I am sober enough to know that I do not want him in my room. I had a very pleasant evening, I tell him, though of course I paid for it, and I am hoping he can help me get home but I cannot let him come in. You must go, I tell him, bracing the door with my foot. His cigarette smoke curls in the air between us as he tries to convince me otherwise.
Of course, Manuel wants to sleep with me and I cannot say that I would not like to sleep with him. But I know what my main attraction is; it is my resistance. My refusal. I will go so far, but not far enough. In this way I am chaste and true to my marriage. I cannot live feeling that I have something to confess.
Manuel thrusts his face close to mine, asking one more time if he can stay and I am tempted to say yes. His hands touch my face, my neck, but I tell him no, pushing the door closed. He must leave. I listen for a few moments as he stands outside, deciding what to do next. Then I hear his footsteps as he shuffles away.
I crawl into my narrow bed. It is odd to be sleeping alone. I am used to bodies in the bed—husband, child, dog. I curl up, trying to imagine that Jessica is there. I am the one who puts her to bed at night. She wraps her arms around my neck and holds me there until she is asleep. Often I fall asleep as well and Todd has to come and wake me. He nudges me until I stumble into bed. When Jessica was born, I counted all her fingers and her toes. I checked to see she had all her parts. Now at this distance I try to remember her child’s body, miniature arms and legs. I sniff for her odor. I try to reconstruct her, piece by piece.
The room smells of Manuel’s cigarette smoke and of the pomade he puts on his hair. The sheets that had been so cool and comforting to me before begin to itch. I get up and throw open the balcony doors. It is a beautiful night—balmy and clear. I take a deep breath. Then, clasping the railing of the balcony, I peer down.
Music comes from somewhere, salsa with that strong Latin beat, and I tap my fingers. In the plaza below dozens of people mill about. Lovers kiss on the banquettes beneath the waving palmettos. Men with beer bottles play cards under a streetlight. But mainly what I feel are bodies. It is as if I can smell them up here. Warm bodies, bodies that will mingle and blend. Skin will rub against sticky skin on this warm night. Closing my eyes, I try to imagine hands on my breasts, my hips. A tongue gliding over my body, dipping into my openings, my cracks.
Sixteen
THE NIGHT before I left, Todd wanted to make love. When I crawled into bed beside him, he reached for me. Usually we at least read for a little while, but that night he immediately turned to me. His hands seemed to be all over me, on my thighs, my buttocks, my breasts. He pulled me to him as if somehow he were afraid I’d disappear. I lay back and let him do the work. His fingers reached inside of me; I felt his tongue gliding down my thigh. “Relax, Maggie,” he said. “Don’t try so hard.”
“I’m relaxed,” I said, but my mind was on other things. What had I forgotten? Had I packed too much? Should I bring more for gifts and bribes—soap, toothpaste, canned goods? Pencils, Chiclets? Who would take Jessica to gymnastics on Tuesday? Was that on my list for Todd?
The covers came off and suddenly I was cold. Shivering, I folded my hands across my chest. Todd pulled away, rising out of the bed. “I don’t know where you are, Maggie, but it’s not with me.”
Sometimes I think I invent these little tests just to see if he’s paying attention, if he really notices me.
Todd and I met at a Valentine’s ball. It’s not the kind of thing I’d normally attend, but it was Valentine’s and my girlfriend Betsy and her husband Wade, who were throwing it, wanted me to come. Be coy, she told me. Flirt.
When I arrived I found a room full of people dressed in red and black, all in black masks. I’d read once in a biology book that red and black in the animal world are the colors of venom. I’ve never done well in crowds, let alone in crowds of masked strangers, and I drifted to a corner of the room, where a man leaned against the wall.
He wore a black shirt and pants and the two of us looked as if somebody had died. I couldn’t see his face, but I noticed his long, slim hands. They were white and delicate, as if he played the piano. I thought it would be nice to be touched by those hands. I felt foolish wearing a mask and feared it would leave strange creases on my face, like a raccoon.
“I haven’t worn a mask since I thought I was the Lone Ranger” were the first words he said to me. We both started to laugh.
When we left together, he asked if I wanted to share a cab. In the cab he asked if I wanted to stop by his place for a drink. I know this scenario, I told myself, I’ve been here before. “Sure,” I said, “why not.” When we got there, he lifted off my mask to kiss me. Then he said, jokingly, I liked you better with your mask on.
What’s that supposed to mean? I asked.
We began to see each other a few times a week. When we went out, he’d come over early and fix things around my apartment. He screwed hooks on the wall so I could hang up my bathrobe. He put in shelves beside my bed, happily puttering around. Sometimes on a Saturday afternoon we just stayed inside and I’d read and listen to music and he’d put new faucets on the sink.
It took a while before he told me that he was seeing someone else. A woman from his office. Not Sarah, but someone who left shortly after we got married. He said it wasn’t serious with her, but it had been going on for a long time. For weeks he was torn between the two of us. He’d see me one night and her the next. On the nights when he didn’t see me, I found myself walking down the street where he lived. I’d look up at his apartment to see if there was a light on. Once I saw the shadows of two people against the wall.
After that I stopped returning his calls. He wrote me a note to ask what was wrong. I waited a few weeks, then I wrote him back. I told him I liked the way he laughed and the way he knew how everything worked. He could tell me how my toaster worked, how water moved through the pipes in the kitchen. If you ever stop seeing the woman in your office, I wrote to him, I’d love to see you again. Two weeks later we were together and since then we haven’t been apart.
Before meeting Todd, I
moved around a great deal. I was restless, though I couldn’t tell you why. I lived in different places—a lot of them, really—and never had, or wanted, much that was my own. I lived in the Bay Area for a while and liked it there, where I worked for a start-up magazine called On the Road, but it folded after a year, and that and an earthquake shattered my confidence. I went up to Seattle, but the weather got me down and no one laughed at my jokes. I didn’t want to come back East, but that was where the magazine jobs were.
My first job was writing the honeymoon column for Bride Magazine. I traveled to five-star resorts all over the world and stayed alone in honeymoon suites. You might think this would be an interesting job, finding romantic destinations for newlyweds—an Australian outback ranch overrun with marsupials, a hotel on Maui whose rooms were accessible only by launch, the concierge floor at the Peninsula in Los Angeles—but actually it was very lonely. I had everything at my fingertips, never had to leave the room.
I became adept at assessing comfort—the coolness of the sheets, the seclusion of the room, the speed of room service. I learned to distinguish good food from bad and warned love-hungry couples of heavy sauces, overcooked meat. Then I’d fly home, where I had short-lived relationships with fly-by-night men. Some lasted a few weeks, others a season. There was one man I liked very much who took me ice-skating at Rockefeller Center on Christmas Eve; then I never saw him again. A man named Dan who made documentaries lasted over a year, until he came down with a venereal disease he did not get from me. Another waited until I’d fallen in love with him, then took an assignment abroad.
Todd seemed to enjoy my comings and goings. He liked to think of me as some kind of an adventurer, which I was not and really am not. After a long weekend alone in a feather bed in Ravello, Todd had dinner cooking for us on the stove. I thought I could get used to this—the comfort of familiar things. Over steaks and wine he asked me if I didn’t want to think about settling down and I told him I did.
The night before I left on this trip, Todd stood at the window, his buttocks white, his body lean. I have always admired his long lines, his gazellelike stride. Now he stood still, alert, watching something.
I got up, naked as well, and stood at the window beside him. The sky was a startling white and from it huge flakes fell. Big, billowy flakes, covering the back garden, the garbage, and the filth. I’ve never much enjoyed the feeling of being snowbound, stuck inside. You can’t go to work. You can barely trudge to the store. Todd put a cold hand on my shoulder and for once it was my turn to warm him.
“Maybe I won’t be able to leave,” I told him.
Now he tipped my head back. “I wish that were so.”
This time he had my attention. Maybe I won’t be able to go anywhere, maybe I’ll just stay cocooned inside. I brought him back to the warmth of our bed. For once I was the one who was all over him. My hands on his nipples, my head bent between his legs. He groaned, tossing his head from side to side, but my mind was elsewhere. I was already gone.
We woke to the scraping of shovel to asphalt. As I left for the airport, our neighbor, Joel Rodgers, stood with his thermos of hot chocolate laced with brandy, offering it to every passerby, and Pete Bennett, who lived across the street, had his salt and state-of-the-art stainless steel shovel, which he proudly displayed.
Teenage boys from farther down the block were coming by, offering their services. On a summer’s night they play their music too loud. There have been muggings down the block, so I try to stay above Fourth Avenue. But in winter for a few dollars these kids will shovel us out. Todd gave them five bucks as we left. Todd and Jessica both took me—they insisted on taking me—to the airport. In the taxi we huddled together like bears in a cave. First I’d fly to Miami. There I’d get the plane to la isla. “Bring me saltwater taffy, Mommy,” Jessica said. “Bring the warm weather home,” Todd said, smiling, kissing me lightly on the lips.
Somewhere over the Carolinas, as coffee was being served, I see Jessica and Todd building a snowman out front. They’re heating the lentil soup I’ve left them and hot chocolate on the stove. Now someone has brought out a sled and everyone is piling on. Jessica gets her little green sled out too. All the children go sledding down the middle of the street, striking terror in their parents’ hearts, as if suddenly a car will materialize in this snowy scene, a snowplow will appear out of the blue, and a parent’s face will round into a scream as a child sleds downhill.
Seventeen
BEHIND THE HOUSE where I grew up there was a creek and it was the nicest thing about where we lived. It was called Indian River and Lydia and I went there whenever we could. We started going so we could let our mother sleep. Along Indian Creek there was a path and we followed it as far as we dared into the woods. We’d head out on a fall day, listening to every rustle, imagining we saw deer or even bear. We’d walk for a long time until it got dark. Then we’d follow the thread of the stream back toward our house.
I never enjoyed the walk back. I wanted to keep going, farther and deeper into the woods. If it hadn’t been for Lydia, I probably would have, though she never asked me to turn around. Our house sat on top of a knoll and I liked to stand at the edge of the creek and look at the house, wondering what kind of people lived inside. I imagined pots of savory stew, hot on the stove, a fireplace with a fire burning. A father reading a book in his chair with a cat or dog at his feet. I wanted to pass this house and go on to the next, but Lydia would take my hand and lead me home.
We tiptoed into the house because our mother slept in the afternoons. For years she worked as a graveyard nurse because the pay was better. When I was small, I thought this meant she took care of sick people in cemeteries. She worked at night, tending the needs of the sleeping and comatose, handing out pills, giving shots, comforting them in their night terrors while her own children—Lydia and myself—waved good-bye to her as she came in each morning and we headed off to school.
During the day she slept. I have learned to open a refrigerator without making a sound, to watch television with no volume, as if the actors were mute. We whispered when we spoke because if we woke our mother she would be angry. She never screamed at us, but if we bothered her she made us go with our father to the store.
After the plastic business went bankrupt, my father opened a card and stationery shop at the mall on the outskirts of the town where we lived near the Canadian border. The shop was divided into occasions—birthdays, Halloween, religious. When Lydia and I played in the store, we liked to mix up the envelopes so that the wrong size would be with the wrong card. Our father was often talking to suppliers, and later to his creditors, and we’d hear him shouting, “I want aunts, I want uncles, I want sympathy.”
Our father never really seemed to like it when we were there. He had business to tend to and he was always on the phone, his hand cupped around the receiver. I remember trying to read his lips. Sometimes he gave us things to do. He let us use the adding machine. Once he gave us a pad of white paper and colored pens and we made pictures that he hung up behind the cash register.
Lydia always brought her dolls with her. I had dolls too but mine sat on a shelf in our room. Lydia carried hers around in a small suitcase like the sample cases of the salesmen who frequented the store. She lined them up on the counter and pretended they were customers. The dolls would buy reams of paper, a million envelopes, and we’d never have to worry about money again. Though there were never many people in the store, our father couldn’t seem to stand our voices, and our laughter made him scowl. If we giggled or made noise, he shook a fist at us as if he would hit us. He never did, but it seemed as if he would.
At night while our mother worked the graveyard shift, our father stayed in his room illuminated by the blue light of the TV and Lydia dressed and undressed her dolls. We could hear the TV seep into our room all night long—the blare of bargain sales, late-night talk shows, swashbuckling films. Before Lydia went to sleep, she played with her dolls. She liked to dress them up, comb their hair. Fix th
em up as if they had parties to go to, places to be. She made them plaid skirts and gypsy turbans, serapes and cowgirl suits out of bits of scrap.
While she groomed her dolls, I sat on my bed and we spoke softly in the secret language that only we understood. Actually, even we didn’t understand it, but we memorized phrases and words that meant things like “Do you want a chicken sandwich?” or “Do you think you’ll get an A in algebra?” and we’d understand. Once Lydia wanted me to come up with a word for mad. She was angry and said she wanted to say, “I am mad.” But I told her that the word didn’t exist. No one who spoke our language was ever mad.
If our father heard us talking in our language, he’d make us sleep apart. There was a guest room (not that we ever had any guests, but later our mother slept there) and he’d make Lydia sleep in that room. He said, “You girls are being bad again. You are very bad.”
Before he put Lydia in the guest room, he took her dolls away. Lydia begged him not to, but he said that when she was good, she could have them back again.
Because our mother slept in the afternoon, it was usually our father who attended school assemblies and plays. He went to school dressed in a suit and tie. There was something dashing about him when he came for our school plays. Once we did all the states in the union. I was West Virginia and Lydia was Oregon. The presentations went east to west and our father had to sit through all the states in between.
Our teacher, Miss Debencorn, seemed to like our father. She brought him little cups of apple juice, which he refused, shaking his head. But they kept talking, their heads leaned together, laughing from time to time. Miss Debencorn must have thought he was raising us on his own. As we were leaving school that day, our father took us each by the arm. “Yes,” he said, “they’re great little girls.”