“I’ve seen you before,” Sylvia said.
“My name is Rose. I bet you’re tired and thirsty. I bet you’d like to see your room.”
“What we need, I believe, is a bathroom,” John whispered.
“But first, I’ll show you the bathroom and help you get settled.”
“I’ve been here before,” Sylvia announced as Rose, holding her hand, stopping to slip her feet into a pair of rubber sandals that were waiting inside the door, led his mother down the hallway. She moved at the old woman’s pace so patiently there might not have been such a thing as time or other places to get to.
The floors glimmered and on a shelf he saw a vase of garden flowers.
“I know you.”
“Yes, you do. I’m Rose.”
“I was so rushed I didn’t bring any pads or any of those disposable….”
“Don’t you worry. I have everything you need. This is the bathroom. Let me show you.”
When the door shut behind them, John found himself alone in the hallway, eavesdropping as they chattered comfortably. “Exactly,” Rose was saying, “they go back in here. So you’ll always know where they are.”
“I remember. John brought me to your house before, because I remember that they go in there.”
“I’m glad it feels familiar. Then you won’t have to be nervous about moving in with us.”
“Oh no, I’m not nervous. I know you and I know this place. But The Meadows is where I live and I want to get back there because they’re going to wonder where I am.” She added in a polite tone, “You’ve been very kind to let me use your bathroom.”
Sylvia came out first and pronounced it a very nice place. “I would come here if I didn’t already have an apartment somewhere else.”
“Good, let me show you the bedroom.”
Rose took them to the end of the hallway and when she opened a door, a blaze of yellow light fell across the floorboards. “It gets the afternoon sun so this is where I keep my plants.”
They stepped into a large room filled with greenery. It had a single bed, a reading chair, and an enormous birdcage where a bird of many colors eyed them warily. “Sammy! Sammy!” it shrieked.
His mother hobbled up to it and said, “I’m Sylvia. Can you say Sylvia?”
“That’s Maurice. He loves Sammy and he’s always hoping that when the door opens it’s going to be her.”
“You’ll have to learn to say Sylvia,” his mother chided, clucking at Maurice as though she were familiar with the ways one made friends with parrots. “He knows me. See, we’ve been roommates before.”
The bed was covered with a soft blue quilt. Tiers of houseplants were arranged in front of the windows. It would be like sleeping in a terrarium, John thought.
“Dinner’s at five thirty. I really must get back.”
“Mom, we’ve been through this. You’re done with The Meadows. They kicked you out.”
“What do you mean? They didn’t kick me out.” She straightened herself up and in a queenly tone corrected him: “I am a resident.”
“You need more care. And you’ll get more care here. And that’s final. You have to get it into your head. This is your new place.” He couldn’t help it. Even though he knew very well that she wasn’t being dense on purpose, it had been a long day and all he really wanted was to have everything settled.
“There’s Sammy,” Rose said, slipping her hand into his mother’s. “Can you see her over there? She comes every afternoon to help me.”
Rose pointed out the window, and in the distance behind the barn, John saw something moving. But it wasn’t a person.
“She’s a senior in high school. She lives nearby and it’s faster coming over the hill,” Rose said.
As they watched, the movement took on definition and though he found it hard to believe at first, he realized as the object approached that it was indeed what it had seemed: a girl with long hair whipping about was galloping towards them on a brown horse.
“I know I’ve been here before,” Sylvia said in a soft and amazed voice. “I’ve seen that hill. I’ve seen that rider.”
They watched her dismount and lead the horse into the barn.
“Sam does the evening rounds, although right now you’re our only resident.”
“This room is very pretty,” Sylvia said. “I like it. I like the view. There’s so much to look at.”
John consulted his watch. They’d been there an hour and it was clear that the place would be fine. He clasped his mother’s hand and said, “I have to go now,” his voice thick with a sorrow that had nothing to do with this leave-taking.
“Drive carefully.” She was practiced in the routine of goodbye. She waited for the touch of his lips to her forehead and then made the remembered motherly remarks. “Don’t worry about me. And next time, bring Mary.”
The lake was only a few miles north of the highway. But there was no evidence of a huge body of water just beyond the hills. Just as well. His mind, empty of the usual “to do” list, watched the beautiful, black machine eat up the miles while his memory snagged itself on a conversation.
You’re nothing but a robot, she had said to him in the early hours of the day they had decided to separate. You don’t take anything into consideration except money. Money’s the ultimate goal.
“Go ahead,” he’d said sarcastically. “Don’t hold back. Now that you’re telling me what you really think, why not unburden yourself?”
Okay John. Then what about doing good? What about making a quality product? What about contributing to people’s health and well-being? Well, why go on. I won’t waste my breath.
He remembered how beautiful she had appeared at that moment, how wise and womanly and sad. But she couldn’t blame him for economics. “Numbers don’t lie. And I’m a good businessman because I understand growth. For your information, growth is necessary for a healthy business.” He’d finished with the brand of humility he’d learned at the therapist’s. “I’m good at growth. I’m not good at other things.”
That was not entirely true. As he knew all too well, growth was aggression. There were businesses that could plateau and still have healthy balance sheets, but he was too ambitious for that. He’d re-invented the entire cheese landscape and now Lucky Cow was not just a company any longer, but a force. Each time he altered the product it received national attention without even a full-scale advertising campaign and instead of TMS, targeted market saturation, they had BMS, bulk saturation. Now BMS drove the corporation. Lucky Cow altered packaging or ingredients continuously, simply to gain attention.
The therapist suggested that he and Mary spend a Saturday together every month and for awhile, it seemed to be working. On a Saturday in June, Mary had wanted to explore the lake. They’d found a hidden path that took them to a small cove with a protected beach. The water was cold, invigorating. “Isn’t it wonderful?” she cried, dancing about with the simple pleasure of nakedness. He splashed out quickly; it was too cold. But he found a rock to sit on, and watched her play in the water while he rubbed himself dry with his shirt. When she came out, rinsed and glistening, they had moved in concert. He caught a stink of something on the wind, but it was from another cove, so he put it out of his mind, and together, following the lead of their bodies, they dropped down to the sand. But then he felt insects biting his legs, tiny pinpricks of pain, over and over. Sand fleas. He slapped them away until she took his hand and murmured softly, holding his hand to her mouth, her breast, stroking him, kissing him, opening herself. But it started again and finally, he couldn’t stand it, he jumped up.
Yes, it was too abrupt, but he couldn’t help it, they were annoying him.
Back in the car, Mary’s eyes were wet. She was pressed against the door, as far away from him as possible. He couldn’t think of the right thing to say, so he nosed the car along the curve of the lake and let it find the one lane blacktop, so unused there were weeds along the edge. It took them to a cove they had never visited. They discovere
d a hotel that seemed to operate mostly as a restaurant. The elegant, old-fashioned structure was three stories high, with a gingerbread porch cantilevered over the rocks. The tables were filled, the diners dressed as though for a party, women sparkling with jewelry and perfume, white-coated waiters balancing platters heaped with some kind of fish. They found a table on the outer edge, and in the spirit of the party they ordered it too. Smelt. The breaded, crispy, tiny fish, heaped on a silver platter, came with a dipping sauce. Mary was famished. She looked errant, disturbed, laughing too loudly, eating the fish with her fingers, dozens disappearing at once. He nibbled carefully, preferring the beer and celery to creatures that had been dragged from the oily bottom of a polluted lake.
Yes, he knew exactly what his mistakes were. Hadn’t they talked about it endlessly? But no amount of hushed dinner-time talk, her greasy fingers lifting the fish to her mouth, her laughter hanging on a precipice where it might at any moment dissolve into tears, could alter the fact that an army of small, stinging insects had attacked his legs and not hers. What was he supposed to do? He said he was sorry but apparently his timing was off. The time for sorry had been earlier. Well he didn’t understand then and he didn’t understand now how an intelligent adult woman could be so undone by such a tiny thing. Fleas! It was their last outing.
The phone rang. “How’d it go?” the familiar voice asked.
John was tempted to hedge a bit just out of habit. But why? Bentley was his friend. “It’s a nice place. I think she’ll get good care.”
“Great.” Bentley paused, taking a moment before revealing the real reason for the call. “What did you think of Rose?”
“Rose is remarkable. She’s everything you said. It’ll be a nice change from The Meadows. My God, now I realize what a horror that place was.”
“Do you think…” but Bentley hesitated and John could see him casting his eyes downwards. “Well, would it be all right, John, if I go there once to visit your mother? Do you think she’ll remember me?”
“Absolutely. She’ll be happy to see you. I guarantee it.”
“Good. I think I’d like to do that. It would give me a chance to say hello to Rose.”
“I’m getting into traffic,” John said, understanding as soon as the opportunity had passed that he should have suggested they go there together.
But Bentley, who was used to non-engagement, simply went on. “Okay, just listen. The tests are done. We know what to use. It’s not straw dust; it’s not wood pulp. Too much texture. Get this. It’s water. Plain, ordinary water. With seven essential vitamins and minerals, plus the oils and coagulants and stabilizers and flavorings. You know, the list.”
Water, John thought, coming into the city, weaving the Mercedes through the ribbons of traffic and then braking suddenly when the line slowed. On a beautiful summer day when he’d seen a girl galloping her horse down a hill, water, that plain and forthright, almost spiritual substance, seemed exactly right.
Tertium Quid
Meredith had entered the age of entropy, and the great media machine of American culture gunned past her, its probes searching out juveniles. Movies, music, TV shows, like bathing suits and bras, were not created for a person like her. Sixty and beyond, it was the age no one wanted to be reminded of, except of course the other women who had reached it also. They were an army that is no longer needed yet still wanders the countryside.
Why wasn’t it a celebration? Birth control, pregnancy scares: relics from a bygone era! Nipples, once so eager, poking through the blouse at the cry of an infant, any infant—they were no longer on call! No more blood, no more babies, no more milk! No guilt for staying home with sick children. No sick children fending for themselves while mommy worked. The whole megillah, come to an end, and now a different mixture of hormones that required a tweezers to the chin every once in awhile, extracting the male whisker. What was going to happen next?
She was lucky. She had a husband, also aged, and the two of them had Dr. Zoot. Dr. Zoot was the only one at the frontier who welcomed the troops. Women in their waning years: he liked them.
“Yes indeedy,” Dr. Zoot murmured, perched high on a limb of a tree, licking his chops as he watched the troops clanking across the field with their heavy, outdated equipment.
Gregory, the husband, was a few years older than Meredith, but he had a head of hair that was still just as thick and deeply black as it had been when he was young. At least his hairline had receded, but the higher forehead, instead of aging him, conferred wisdom and authority. Tomorrow they were going to the Dexlers for a dinner party, but tonight, why, there was nothing on the calendar. “Hey,” Meredith said, draping her arm over Gregory’s shoulder, fitting her palm on his nice plump bottom. “Wanna mess around?”
“I’m tired,” he said. “I’m going to bed.”
“How about I come up and we see what happens?”
Forget it. A thought not voiced. The husband had been trained. “I’d really look forward to doing that with you some time, but tonight I’m really tired. I have to get horizontal. My back aches.”
“You’re sure? I can’t do a little convincing? Maybe the doctor is interested.”
“The doctor is not interested.”
“How do you know? Sometimes he surprises us.”
“Not this time. Trust me, nothing’s going to happen.”
Dr. Zoot had grown older too, but he hadn’t noticed. It seemed the male ego was indestructible, while the female ego, those sad, tired soldiers marching through the hot, deserted fields, grew dispirited. Of course, Dr. Zoot was not the actual phallus. He was chief of staff, spokesperson. The phallus itself . . . well, it was one of the mysteries. Beyond reason, definition, understanding, its inscrutability was perhaps what she liked the most.
Women were certainly more predictable, and, as far as Dr. Zoot was concerned, the naughtier the better. He whirled, he danced, he imagined. In the mornings he peed off the porch in full view of the road and wandered around without trousers, his air-cooled parts still pink and bouncy though some of those hairs were gray.
In reality—but what was that? And whose? Meredith’s sophomore year roommate, an aspiring fashion designer named Carmen, had created Dr. Zoot in her sketchbook and he’d become the model for her line of gangster-era clothing.
She’d given him a sinister look. She’d posed him against crime-scene backdrops: on bridges, at loading docks, in railroad yards. “I have to tell you something, Merry. It’s about that guy you brought back here. Gregory? Because I’m really a little worried. You probably don’t see it, but when I look at him . . . well, it’s obvious that it’s on his mind every second. Those lips. That line of intense red under the mustache. He wants things. All the time. Do you like it, being his victim?” Poised on small feet that supported, perfectly, her wide, generous frame, Carmen had raised her thin, starved eyebrows. It was 1973, the age of the free and undisciplined body, and not many women plucked.
“No,” Meredith replied in a timid voice, even though she knew no wasn’t the right answer because victim wasn’t the right way to describe the thing she had with Gregory. But yes wouldn’t have worked either.
“Be careful, Meredith. You are not his toy, remember that. You are not a thing for him to play with.”
“Right,” she replied. “But I’m not. It’s not like that. Not at all. It’s . . .” She hesitated, realizing suddenly how different they were, looking for a quality Carmen might respect. “Fun.” That word was followed by a cold silence. “Cool,” Carmen said from her side of the room, then added in a kinder voice, “I just don’t want you to be used by him. But if it’s fun, then okay. You would know, right?”
Dr. Zoot was a thin man with long hair and a mustache. He walked through the sketchbook in the seven outfits Carmen called the Italian collection. Meredith noticed there was something familiar about the lightly penciled face. Then she realized. It was Gregory wearing the long topcoat, the pleated pants. In one of the drawings he was on the Brooklyn bridge, a
machine gun pointed at the Manhattan skyline.
Was she a toy? But she liked it. It was secret and exciting and dark and it was never the same. And if she was a toy, wasn’t Gregory one too? It was all so hard to figure out. There were feelings and then there were ideas. And under it all, there was this shared instinct, this thing they’d discovered together, an amazing, breathless ability to explode themselves into new people. Was it only sex? She didn’t know. But what was hers or his and who was being used . . . that was old stuff, no longer relevant.
Five years later, they were living together, and one day, apropos of nothing, Meredith said, “Remember my roommate?”
“The one with the big tits. From Queens.”
“That’s exactly what she would expect you to say. Why the focus on her breasts?”
“They were really big. I was hoping to catch her with her shirt off. Because she always covered them up with all this stuff, I don’t know, sweaters or overalls or something.”
“That was exactly her point. There you are, thinking about sex, always sex.”
“So, what’s wrong with that?” There was a completely unperturbed look on Gregory’s face. He had short, neatly trimmed hair because the age of the free and undisciplined body was slowly giving way to the age of the super-groomed. Even Gregory. Not only did he cut his hair, he shaved, and when he smiled, she saw the solid clean sweep of his naked jaw.
Gregory taught pottery in an after-school program; Meredith taught acting. She also wrote plays, applied for grants, and did whatever she could to nourish the necessary belief in things that didn’t actually exist, like funding and audiences willing to support the dramatic arts. She’d learned to trust the dubious, the hopeful, the almost. Which was why it was necessary to pay attention to the concrete things of her life. Like Gregory’s smooth cheekbone. She could lose herself there.
“Dr. Zoot. That’s what she called you.”
He gave her an uncomprehending look.
“You know, the gangster type. That’s what she thought you were. A fornicator, a dirty jokes man, a tits and ass guy.”
The Exit Coach Page 2