Of course George doubted this. His father had stayed with her because she was an erotic addiction. So there it stood: this salad of the forbidden and the catastrophic that was his sexuality.
He thought of Anna frequently, mainly when he was not involved with anyone, wondering where she was and what she was doing. She lingered in him in the way of a religious idea from one’s youth, a sense of faith that, while not practiced, one never quite abandons.
14
For Anna the hole left by George was more ragged, like a sudden tear in a skin of steel. She took a job that summer as a paralegal, met a couple of unreliable and handsome young men—one she found in line, buying sheets in Gimbels on East 86th Street, his were navy blue, she should have known to avoid him—got a roommate, lost a roommate, got another, somehow managed to live peaceably with the second one, and the autumn passed. She went home for the minimal two days at Thanksgiving and again at Christmas, got through the winter, and in springtime met a boy, a year younger, still an undergraduate, who thought for a short time he was in love with her.
The affair began in April and ended that August, 1980, just after the middle of the month, on a night that happened every year, when one felt summer break—air gone soft suddenly, without its previous brutality. Anna, out on the street, after the human heat and smoke and close quarters of a party she’d been at, accompanied by this boy, this young man, this future success, one of those upper-middle-class white boys whose lives are written on their faces, who will have the same haircut at fifty as they had at twenty, his name was Evan, and having escaped that room, she found herself willing for a moment to call the weather, the evening itself, kind, though she knew it wasn’t. She and Evan were walking. The Young Businessman as she called him: he had an off-sequence semester left still to complete in college though he was her age—he’d taken two years off to work in France, la-di-da—another few months before he would graduate and commence his Young Businessman life. There had been no Young Businessmen, it seemed to her, four and three and even two years ago: So where had they all come from?
Her feelings for him had burned through the hard cured wood of desire and faced now the moist green facts; almost a relief, he was about to end it. After they escaped the party they rejected the subway for the sweetness of the cool air. She could feel him calculating there beside her. She pushed back her hair, which smelled like cigarettes. For almost half an hour they walked, out of the Village, into Chelsea, along Sixth Avenue through the grim 30s and 40s, not talking much, finally stopping to sit on the stone ledge of a reflecting pool in front of one of the silver towers across from Rockefeller Center. Time & Life Building.
Well, there you go, she said, that covers it.
What? he said.
She gestured at the steel Helvetica letters that stood over the nearest entrance. Time, she said. Ampersand. Life. Covers the gamut of possible discourse.
Oh, he said. Yeah.
Sometimes hitting his intellect was like running your small car into the side of an elk. He came from out west, where irony baffled.
And he was nervous, she could see.
The pool they sat in front of ran the width of the building along its Sixth Avenue side, separating the humped swirl-patterned plaza from the building’s plate-glass façade. The traffic lights along the avenue reflected in the black liquid like flames on the water, except every few minutes they turned from red to green. She and Evan had walked a long way, more than two miles. He had asked her just now if she was all right, with her nice shoes, and she’d said yes, she was fine, which was true for once; they were that rare thing, comfortable shoes, sandals with little wedge heels.
Let’s sit down anyway, he’d said. The formality gave him away.
Off and on there had been a slight breeze, and it rose now. She wore a pale pink dress with a gathered waist and thin straps, like a sundress but a little dressier than that, and over it a small white cotton sweater that she’d draped around her neck, sleeves hanging down in front of her like the two ends of a man’s necktie come undone. People had begun, after the disco and preppie phases, to dress on a regular basis to go out, to parties, even for movies and a drink after, a fact she both enjoyed and was, politically speaking, wary of: it boded ill for justice. Her dark hair fell behind her, cascading into the sweater’s folds and at one point along the way he had reached over and flipped some of her hair out from amid the sweater. Where had that been? In front of the coffee shop near 14th Street? Crossing 23rd? The skirt’s stiff cotton bustled upward when she sat; she smoothed it against her legs. This might have been the gesture of a happier woman, of a woman luxuriating in the little self-deceptions that accompanied falling in love. But it was not that kind of night, not a night when this man was endeavoring to make her happy, when he was doing his best to make her laugh, when she was waiting to see what he would do, or what she would do, as she was a woman who never knew ahead of time what she would do. Looking back across her growing history of desirable men, she never understood what, aside from the unpredictable tides of lust, made her say no one night, yes another. So far, her instincts had proved more or less trustworthy. They were not all good men, not by any means, but there were no really awful nights, a fact for which, on hearing the stories of her friends, she felt grateful. This night, however, was shaping up badly. She sat, she pushed down the skirt, and considered, in a moment of solidarity, all the women that had been here before, generations of them, sitting somewhere on the avenue late at night with a man, while he readies himself to get rid of her. Thousands of them there must be, tens of thousands! It’s a long tradition, like sewing your first hem, baking your first pie: getting dumped near the end of summer.
You are incredibly valuable to me, Evan said.
Oh no, she said. No no no, please.
No, really, he said.
You have to be able to do better than that. I went out with you.
What’s wrong with saying you’re a valuable person in my life?
Besides that it’s a lame cliché? she said. I mean, okay. How valuable? Can you give me a figure? A year’s starting salary, maybe? Do you have another cigarette? I’m at least that valuable.
He gave her the box. She took one out. He struck the match, she leaned over and inhaled, and then sat straight again and blew the smoke above them.
Thank you, she said.
I’m not an ogre, he said.
No, you’re not an ogre.
She had to struggle with herself not to say aloud what passed through her mind, that ogres were more interesting than he was.
Relationships, he said, then stopped.
Yes? she said. Go on? I’m dying to hear your wisdom on this topic.
You don’t have to make this so difficult.
Oh yes, I do, she said. That’s my job. If you don’t go home bloody and in tatters I haven’t done justice to the occasion.
Relationships have to progress, he said. They have to change and go somewhere new, and where ours will go next, I can’t go, not now.
Indeed, she said. And when is Marianne coming back from California, exactly? This woman Marianne was doubly a bane; George had gone out with her for almost a year when they were juniors. A visibly sexy woman but, it was widely known, difficult, demanding, subject to fits. Why did men go for this?
Evan didn’t answer her spoken question or her silent one. Anna smoked her cigarette. She was remembering certain scenes. On an earlier evening, about a month past, he had actually wept; she’d told him she planned to end their little affair, since he had another girlfriend with whom he had actually at least once, by his own admission, discussed marriage—a fact that he couldn’t deny was fundamentally dooming. They talked on the phone, for god’s sake, two or three times a week. But oh oh oh, he cried: he loved her so much. What an asshole. Anna didn’t believe for a minute he loved her. He cried because he didn’t have the balls to tell the girl across the continent about his wandering soul. Or his wandering other parts. Now she was looking at his hair, w
hich was thinning. He knew this himself, certainly, but she was oddly pleased by the fact that she’d never mentioned it, never indicated that she’d noticed it. Her restraint now made her feel noble. She had cried too, of course, how could she not join him? She actually did love him after all, a little; or at least she had been in the pleasurable high dive of convincing herself that she loved him, even while she had seen clearly that he would never belong to her, and that she found distasteful certain aspects of his being. The whole mess was the usual idiocy that one believed one had outgrown, but never did; it was embarrassing to remember, and the embarrassment made her suddenly so angry she could have slapped him in the face. Then it passed. At least she had the satisfaction of being able to situate her own tears in the universe of the authentic: he had cried because he couldn’t have her, and she had cried because she was causing him this sadness. And of course she had backed down; and of course the backing down had been arousing and voluptuous. They lay in bed for hours after, talking, each returning to the other’s body, taking from the supply of erotic satisfaction that had almost been withdrawn. Even at the time she must have known he was a complete fake. Here was a new rule: the moment, the second that you sensed something fake, that you smelled some kind of fakery, that was it—know the man is a fake. Continue fucking him or whatever but never be fooled again.
She exhaled a gust of smoke. I mean it, she said. When is she coming back? Tomorrow? The next day?
No, he said. I don’t know exactly. Like ten days, two weeks.
Leaving yourself a nice gap there, aren’t you? Time for a little pussy in between.
Oh Christ, he said.
I know how you think. That’s exactly how you think.
Whatever you say.
Let me ask you something, she said.
I’m going to break up with her, he said.
You’re probably not, but that’s not what I want to ask you, she said.
I just have to do it in my own time, in my own way.
Yeah, yeah, sure. Whatever. She’s a ballbuster, I have reason to know. But no—here’s what I’m asking—you’re going to vote for Reagan, aren’t you?
This stopped him for a moment.
What do you mean? he finally said.
What do you think I mean? she said. I’m asking—are you going to vote for Reagan or not?
Christ, I don’t know, he said.
Yes, you do, she said. You’re going to vote for Reagan. I’d stake my life on it.
It’s not like Carter is so great, he said. He’s incompetent. The Iran thing is a total fiasco. The economy is in shambles.
Of course, of course, the problem is Carter, she said. You have to save the country from Carter by supporting a barely sentient, third-rate, right-wing actor. It makes total sense. A man who, to the degree you can credit his intellect with actually holding on to something close to a conviction, believes in spreading wealth among the wealthy, where it belongs. He believes in strength—as in, I have the money, I buy the gun, I shoot you, I win. You know, I’m at peace with this little breakup here. I agree with you, we can’t go on. You’re released. You’re free to go. Vaya con Dios.
Anna, he said.
She dropped her cigarette onto the sidewalk, put her pretty shoe on it and firmly ground it out.
What?
What we have—
Had, you mean? Briefly? Very briefly?
What we have, it can’t be touched by things like politics.
Oh my fucking God, she said. That’s the most idiotic thing you have ever said. And believe me—it has competition. It is politics. You are politics. For instance, you know how, at base, you’re a good person, but you have no courage at all, and so will always choose to be a self-serving bastard? That’s politics—
You’re just being nasty now, he said.
You haven’t seen nasty, she said. Now, with Reagan, you know you’re not going to have to fight against the social grain anymore to be a self-serving bastard. Because this culture and Reagan and his crew will open the doors for you, they’ll make it easy and rewarding, they’ll market assholes so they look like patriots and scholars. And so the moment has come in which your inevitable next step has been presented to you. I wanted to know if you’re taking it. And you are.
At this he looked down; he took her hand and squeezed it, as if they were in this together, as if they faced together some shared grief, the loss of a grandparent or the sudden, dire illness of a dear friend. She couldn’t get over it, how false he was at this moment, and how much he believed in his own falseness. She saw suddenly, with a forceful clarity, how successful he would be, what a nice life he would have. And what would become of her? How was she to function in a world in which these fucking guys would thrive? She supposed they had always thrived.
She pulled her hand from his. I want another cigarette, she said.
They walked again for a bit and then she said they should get a cab and go home.
* * *
THEIR DRIVER, WHO had the look, Anna thought, of Frank Zappa meets the doorman on Rhoda—even though you never saw the doorman on Rhoda you knew this was what he looked like—started chatting as soon as they’d given their twin destinations, first his place and then hers, two blocks farther uptown. A talker. Then he held a fat joint in the open window of the bulletproof divider:
Do you guys get high? he said.
Yeah, sure, Anna said. I mean, I will. I don’t know about him. He’s voting for Reagan.
No shit? the driver said. He turned around—didn’t use the mirror but did the full turn—to look at Evan before turning back to the road.
You’re voting for that dickwad?
I don’t know who I’m voting for, Evan said. Maybe I’ll vote for Anderson.
Casper the friendly fuckin’ ghost, you mean, the driver said. Well, whatever turns you on, man.
He lit the joint, inhaled, and passed it over the seat for them to take from him, which Anna did. She pulled in a short toke, to get the feel of it, then a larger one and held it down. She handed it to Evan.
When the driver blew his smoke out it curled from his open window and blew directly into Anna’s. Evan handed the joint back over the seat, coughing slightly.
That fuck is going to win, the cabdriver said. They were in Central Park, alone with no other cars on the Park Drive, rattling through the crossing lights both red and green. It occurred to Anna that if they got stopped they’d all go to jail. That would put a crimp in Evan’s career plans.
People are just stupid enough to elect that guy, the cabbie said. They all think he can make them rich. I mean, all the white people.
While he was talking he waved the joint around like a baton. Anna leaned across Evan, who was looking glum and silent, and poked her head into the driver’s little window. She smiled at him and gently took the joint from his fingers.
Good dope, she said.
Yeah, he said. I got it from this American Indian dude. I can’t remember what tribe he is, Apache or some shit. Anyway, a cool guy. Sells some prime weed. He’s got these sinsemilla sticks that look like little veggie kabobs, man, you just want to eat them.
Cool, Anna said. She pulled on the joint and wondered why she’d said cool in that way, as if she were seventeen and living in Santa Cruz. Some sudden reversion to high school stoner-speak: one more social pose for the repertoire. She pulled herself over onto Evan’s legs so she could continue leaning into the opening—she put herself onto Evan’s lap, essentially, and it felt good, which annoyed her. His hand was on her hip, keeping her balanced; slowly it moved to the top of her thigh. She opened her legs slightly, because of the pot, because the weight and warmth of his hand there made her want to, because she was curious to see what he’d do, and because now that she didn’t care about him, unlike an hour ago, it was quite possible to fuck him. She pulled herself out of the driver’s window with the joint; Evan’s hand moved inward. She took a second hit, turned herself sideways, leaned into Evan’s face, and started blowing th
e smoke slowly into his mouth. Grudgingly his lips opened; she was staring at his cheek, clean shaven, as it always was and as it always would be, world without end, amen. Imagine that. For the entire rest of his utterly predictable life. She wanted to do something to him: she didn’t know what. She blew the last of the smoke into his eyes.
Aaagh, he said. Stings.
Serves you right, she said.
The problem with getting high is all the thinking. Why had she let herself be smitten by this child? He was certainly handsome. He was ambitious. He was decent in bed, athletic and durable if not terrifically sensitive. Then he had cried. That about wrapped it up: he was intellectually not her equal and tonight, in particular, she could see—even better, now that she was stoned—the bedrock cowardice that would dominate his life. So it—they—wouldn’t have lasted even if it had lasted, and all her fantasies once again were dried and flat, ready to be folded and put away with the pile of other bad romances and embarrassing hopes that she was collecting for her trousseau. Plus—his hand had stopped well short of the goal line. What a putz.
She looked him in the eye.
You’re scared of me now? she said.
No, he said. He gave her an unconvincing smile, a basic unit from the interpersonal tool kit.
Sure, she said. She pulled up her skirt and pushed his hand down right onto her wet spot. There you go—he seemed to be able to figure it out from there.
By the time the cab veered out of the park at 110th, there was no doubt she would go upstairs with him. After the joint was done she had turned herself again on his lap to face front, leaned back against his chest, and, pulling his head toward hers, managed to get her lips onto the corners of his. He had begun to kiss her, and she had taken his hand and put it again between her legs. They made out in this way, her squirming in his lap, feeling him hard beneath her, keeping her hand over his as he pushed it up her leg and massaged her. He kissed her neck. Zappa the driver was glancing at them in the rearview as he drove, and really, who wouldn’t? Once or twice she stared right back. Her brazenness amazed her. It was new.
Crazy Sorrow Page 14