“Can’t argue with that,” says Solomon.
“Finally we went in. Nice wood floors, nice smell—that incense-cinnamon-apple health-food-store smell. Other than that, the ashram could have been a sensory deprivation tank. White and more white. Louise left me in the lobby a few minutes. I felt like a guest at some terrible party, checking out the bookshelves, the hostess’s art. Except that there weren’t any bookshelves, just a couple of pictures, scenes from the life of Guru Nanak done like illustrations from some freaked-out children’s Bible. A letter soliciting donations to help send brother Nawab Singh to the Tokyo Olympics. Well, it made sense that a religion based on breath control would produce good long-distance runners, though the turban might be a handicap, what with wind resistance—”
“All right,” says Solomon soothingly. “All right.”
“Sorry,” says Vera. “Louise reappeared and took me upstairs, down a corridor. Time travel back to the college dorm—the smell of shampoo, that sense of hushed things going on behind closed doors. At least Louise’s room was just like Louise’s room everywhere, a real mess: papers, books, her Persian miniatures and yarn paintings and Mexican cross. I was looking at them like old friends when a fire alarm went off. ‘Louise,’ I said, ‘let’s get out of here!’ ‘Oh,’ she said. ‘Dinner.’
“Downstairs, the whole turbaned crew was already seated at long trestle tables, and when I walked in they started grinning to beat the band. Every one as white as Louise. The only spot of color was the head honcho’s orange turban. He also had the biggest beard, the biggest belly—maybe that’s how they picked him—the same weird, shiny, polyester dress, and suddenly it hit me: nurse’s uniforms! Then the honcho said grace and they brought out the food—”
“Don’t tell me,” says Solomon. “Salad.”
“Iceberg lettuce. With a couple of sprouts and pumpkin seeds and raisins. Dab of curried veggies on the side. All I could think of was how Louise always loved to eat. It was something we did together: cook and eat.” Vera’s remembering a week they spent in someone’s beach shack on Long Island. Mussels, swordfish, arugula, fresh tomatoes.
“But there you’d have thought they cooked for noise instead of for nourishment or taste. Feeding time at the rabbit hutch. Everyone crunching, you couldn’t hear yourself think. Not that anyone wanted to think; they didn’t even want to look at the stuff. They all had their eyes closed so they could concentrate on all that greenery going down.
“After the meal they stood when the honcho did and trooped out to work off the lettuce by breathing through their noses. And maybe I should have breathed with them, maybe it would have changed my life like Louise’s. But I couldn’t. I didn’t want their lettuce breath in my lungs.
“Well, that was pretty much the day. Somebody brought an extra futon into Louise’s room. She turned off the light and in the dark said she had something to tell me: she was engaged to be married to some guy named Bhani Singh.
“‘Bunny Sing?’ I said. ‘Louise, are you joking?’
“She wasn’t. The honcho had arranged the whole thing. They loved each other. This wasn’t like all those pointless love affairs; this was based on deep spiritual love and trust and guaranteed for life. They hadn’t even slept together yet, although at the betrothal rite they’d stared into each other’s eyes and breathed each other’s breath.
“The next day I met Bunny Sing and sure enough: pinky eyes, white eyelashes, little round twitchy nose…” Vera pauses. Here comes the worst part. There’s almost no way she can tell it without revealing herself as a thoroughly reprehensible human being. So she pleads friendship, desperation (“I had to do something!”) and bulls her way through the rest of it on selective editing and pure hell-bent narrative speed: How she stayed another two weeks, shredding lettuce, pretending to breathe, then one afternoon arranged to make a salad drop in Emoryville, just her and Bunny Sing, after which she talked Bunny into accompanying her into a bar. After three beers—his tolerance was, of course, pretty low—he told her he didn’t really want to marry Louise, whom he called Sat Mukanda Khalsa. She was ten years older and not exactly his idea of good-looking, but the honcho threatened to send him back to his Mom and Dad in Denver if he didn’t…Vera had heard enough. That same day she kissed Louise goodbye, flew home, and began writing “Among the Lettuce Lovers,” its first sentence: “Bhani Singh doesn’t want to marry Sat Mukanda Khalsa.” A magazine editor Vera knew published it soon after. Vera folded the printed article into a copy of The Songs of Milarepa, in case there were ashram censors, and in a month or so got a call from Louise’s mother telling her Louise was in Langley Porter mental hospital and thanking her for everything she’d done.
“Thanking you?” says Solomon. “Was she serious?”
“Absolutely,” says Vera. “You don’t know Louise’s mother. Her feeling was, lots of perfectly respectable people wind up in the nuthouse for a spell, but only real nuts put on turbans and eat lettuce and breathe through their noses.”
“Maybe she was right,” he says. “Maybe you did her a favor.”
Vera’s always wondered if that’s what Louise thought, if on some level she’d longed to be rescued. Why else would Louise have forgiven her so quickly? By the time she got out of the hospital, they were friends again. But what Vera says to Solomon is, “Louise was in Langley Porter a year. I think they gave her shock; she’s never said for sure. She’s still on God-knows-what antipsychotic drugs. Maybe I should have let her hop off into the sunset with Bunny Sing…” Vera takes a deep breath, and then is embarrassed for having exhaled through her nose. “Anyhow, that’s when I came to This Week. I figured it was the furthest I could get from the facts. And it’s true; I could have written I WAS A LETTUCE LOVE-SLAVE and sent it to Louise and it wouldn’t have made any difference. No one ever recognizes themselves in This Week.” Except the Greens, she thinks. No mistake likely there.
“Don’t blame yourself,” says Solomon. “It was better than pulling a pillowcase over her head and throwing her into a van. A whole lot less violent.”
“And sneakier,” says Vera. “The pillowcase might have been kinder.” She’s impatient with him for missing some point she’s not sure she gets either. What’s occurring to her now is that one reason she was so eager to tell this story was that she imagined some connection between what she did to Louise and whatever she’s done to the Greens, some conclusion she might come to about responsibility and intention, some chance that confessing her crimes against Louise might exonerate her for sinning against the Greens. Now she sees she was wrong: the two situations couldn’t be more dissimilar. One was intentional, and she got off scot free. The unintentional wrong is the one for which she’ll apparently have to pay.
“Anyhow,” Vera says, “who cares what I had in mind? It’s what happened that’s important.”
“Come on,” says Solomon. “Give yourself a break. For all you know, you saved your friend’s life. How long can someone survive on iceberg lettuce?”
Vera thinks: Lowell would never say “your friend.” Louise knew Lowell before Vera did. It makes Vera so miserable to hear Solomon call Louise that, she thinks she must be hungry. “Speaking of which,” she says, “let’s eat.”
Turning on the kitchen light makes the whole world seem brighter. Vera’s beginning to blame her bad mood on the vodka and grass and the dark. If they’d switched on some lamps an hour ago, she’d never have got so low. A fingerful of chicken salad—the perfect mating of sesame oil and curry—very nearly persuades her that everything’s for the best. These Greens could turn out to be soulmates! And what if they do have the fountain of youth in their backyard, flowing underground, unsuspected till Vera’s article brought it bubbling into light. What then!
Vera turns on the living-room light; and Solomon, though blinking a little, seems grateful. Vera serves out globs of chicken salad, then realizes she’s not hungry. Still, she eats as she used to when Rosie was small, as if showing Solomon how. Halfway through the first mouthful
they know the worst: too much celery, and what there is is old and tough. Even before their first swallow, they’re sucking chicken through a net of soggy green string that they’re then obliged to spit out.
Vera should have caught it earlier. The celery did seem stringy when she was cutting it, but not extraordinarily so; anyway she wasn’t concentrating. And it’s something you wouldn’t notice taking small tastes; a whole mouthful’s needed for the full effect. What makes it more embarrassing is that she’s just spent an hour putting down lettuce eaters.
Solomon smiles and says, “Great stuff,” the very same words the drugstore clerk used about the diaphragm jelly. She thinks: Dog-meat eater. So. It’s worse than she thought, so bad they can’t even joke about it. There’s real discomfort here, even an edge of resentment, and suddenly—though neither could say just how—they both know they won’t become lovers again. How can you make love to someone you can’t even be honest with about dinner? Vera’s gums are aching; it’s painful to eat. At the same time they’re both reluctant for the meal to end. Solomon asks for seconds.
Finally their plates are empty except for maybe two dozen wads of celery string. Solomon looks at the mess and says, “This is the first meal I’ve ever had where you eat and floss at the same time.” Vera laughs, but it’s too late. If only he could have thought of that earlier.
From then on it’s simply dismal. Vera asks if Solomon wants coffee, and even that’s awkward. Like it or not, they can’t forget how they used to stay up and drink coffee in bed so they could stay up some more. Solomon says he guesses not, and Vera says, “Me neither.”
“Well, then, I guess I’ll let you get some rest,” he says. “Good luck Monday.”
“Okay,” says Vera, who’s in a kind of panic, dreading their goodbye. Once more she might as well be in high school, out on a date with some less-than-special guy, half-rigid all evening at the prospect of fending off one timid good-night kiss. It’s surely not like that with Solomon; she loves him. She doesn’t know what’s gone wrong. Finally they do kiss, and both seem relieved when it’s over.
When Solomon leaves, the apartment feels like a vacuum, as if his exit’s sucked out all the oxygen. It’s hard to breathe. Vera goes to the window for what passes in this neighborhood for air; Solomon’s crossing the street. She watches him as far as she can, then hides her face in her hands for the quiet and darkness and perfect privacy she already has more of than she could ever want or need.
VERA’S HITTING THE JACKPOT for dreams. This morning she’s in a forest. Pine-needle floor, striped sunlight, a whooshing like wind in the trees. Something’s hiding in the pines, but Vera’s not scared. She knows that it’s Bigfoot and that he’s got something to give her. The bonging of a Japanese temple gong announces the moment…
But it’s just the phone ringing. Dave calls every Sunday, usually before nine. When Rosie was little, he’d used that as an excuse: people with babies can’t sleep late. Now Rosie’s not even here and he’s still calling. Vera’s come to see that calling’s his version of her waking newborn baby Rosalie to make sure she was all right. Dave’s making sure she’s survived the dangers of Saturday night. It’s annoying being woken, but how can she be angry at someone who’s never outgrown a state she remembers as awful: that fearful, compulsive tiptoeing toward the crib. Who knows what he imagines? He’s always so relieved when she’s there.
“Vera,” he says in the serious tone that augurs heartfelt and way-off-the-mark advice. “That conversation Friday night. This thing that’s come up at your job. Did I ever tell you…?” And he’s started the story before she can ask, “Tell me what?”
“This was forty-five years ago. Me and Manny Satz and a couple other guys were coming back from Figueras with supplies. We kept hearing of battles up ahead, the Fascists weren’t so far away. So we took plenty of detours, you can be sure.
“One of them took us through a little village. San Xavier de los Something. The Anarchists had got there the day before and were celebrating with a giant feast and promising the villagers they’d eat like that every day. This was early in the war. So they set out tables and chairs in the plaza and told everyone to bring all their food, empty the granaries and root cellars, kill the fattest lambs. They said, Go ahead. Eat. Drink. Don’t worry. War? What war? Plenty more where this came from.
“Well, what the hell. Me and Manny didn’t want to be killjoys, we threw in our rations, too. But Jesus, after a while we couldn’t help asking how they meant to provide. After all, it was fall and the start of a war that even then looked to be a long one. The Anarchists just shrugged: no problem.
“The next morning we left, and that night the Fascists came in and wiped out the whole goddamn village.”
Vera has heard this story, more than once. It always reminds her of Breughel’s Peasant Wedding, a painting she hates. That poor bride and groom, looking so terrified and sick. If that’s life in all its greedy richness, count her out. Likewise, Dave’s story: the more she thinks about it, the less she likes it. Eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we die. Is that how Dave sees destiny? Can watching TV all day be his way of making merry?
Now she says, “I don’t get the connection.”
“Oh,” says Dave. “I guess what I’m telling you is: You never know what’ll happen. All you can do is give it your best shot. If you can’t see round the corner, stay in your lane and drive like hell.”
Vera’s astonished. What she’d always thought was a cautionary tale about the Anarchists’ lack of foresight turns out to be a story in praise of their spirit. “That’s a pretty terrific story,” she says.
“Isn’t it?” says Dave.
“Thanks for telling me,” she says.
“It’s nothing,” he says. “So what’s new?”
“Not much,” says Vera.
“Here neither,” says Dave. “The usual. Your mother dragged me to Alexander’s yesterday morning. They were having a sale on men’s winter coats.”
“Coats?” says Vera. “It’s August.”
“Mrs. Rockefeller,” says Dave. “What’s wrong with saving a few bucks?”
Eat, drink, and be merry. Vera thinks of Dave and Norma shopping, Norma standing on tiptoe, smoothing the cloth over Dave’s broad, stooped shoulders, then stepping back for a look. If Vera can only step back, the picture’s quite lovely: a handsome, elderly couple preparing for winter. What’s wrong with that? What’s wrong is the other picture Vera can’t shake. In the photo of Dave with his Lincoln Brigade battalion, he’s wearing a leather bomber jacket that Vera bets he didn’t buy the summer before, didn’t think of till his ship was due to sail and it was already cold.
Vera’s imagining a story about some maniac concealing syringes of poison in the linings of brand-new jackets, thinking BARGAIN BASEMENT BEDLAM: KILLER COATS when Dave says “So?” and she wonders if it’s a follow-up to some specific question or if he’s just ending the silence.
“So nothing,” she says. “Thanks for calling. I’m glad you told me that story, I feel better.” How effortless, how instinctive it is to lie! She should take it for granted that Rosie is lying to her with every breath.
“Hold on, hold on, where’s the fire?” says Dave. “What about this big recital tonight? Don’t tell me you forgot.” Suddenly the conversation threatens to turn into one of those exchanges that question—first implicitly, then overtly—her competence as a mother.
“I wish,” says Vera. “If you’d lived with Rosie this week, you’d want to forget.” At such moments it’s important to remind Dave that he doesn’t live day in, day out with a ten-year-old, and Vera does; it’s why he has a brain left to remember with. “It’s at seven,” she says.
Dave says, “Talk to my social secretary. Norma!”
“Don’t bother her,” Vera says. “You can handle it.”
“Okay,” says Dave. “Want us to pick you up?”
“No thanks,” she says. “I’m meeting Mavis, she’s coming for dinner later. It’s easier if we
meet you there. Ten to seven?”
There’s a deep and—unless Vera’s imagining it—accusatory silence through which she can hear Dave wondering why she’s feeding Mavis and not them. It’s like this whenever he hears she’s having someone over—like jealousy, but more primitive, as if he’s accusing her of wasting family food.
“Quarter to,” he says. “That is, if we want to get seats.”
“All right, quarter to. See you then.”
“Where you running?” he says. “Don’t you want to talk to your mother?”
“Sure,” Vera says disconsolately; Norma likes news, and she has none. Just then she hears Kenny’s knock—Jumpin’ Jack Flash it’s a gas gas gas—on the door. “Just a minute!” she calls.
“Who’s there?” says Dave.
“Kenny,” she says. “From downstairs.”
“You’re kidding,” says Dave. “I didn’t know the feigelach got up so early Sunday morning.” It’s the first indication he’s ever given of knowing it’s an uncivilized hour.
“Paper boy!” Kenny sings out. “Don’t mind me! Just keep on keepin’ on!”
But why should she? It’s the perfect excuse to get off the phone. “Got to go,” she says. “Tell her I’ll see her tonight.”
When she opens the door, Kenny’s already gone. On the doorstep is a Sunday Times, a News, and a bag of croissants. Vera wants to run downstairs and tell Kenny how much she treasures him, then decides against it. For one thing, Kenny’s so anxious for her to find love, he’ll just be disappointed to learn that the reason she was slow in answering the door was not that she was in bed with a lover but on the phone with her Dad. For another, he and Dick are probably getting ready to go out, and that’s when their arguments frequently start.
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