All This Could Be Yours

by Jami Attenberg

  One of the two men next to him laughed, concluding the noise with a sexy purr. “Fuck this,” Gary mumbled, grasped his towel, and stood.

  The two men watched him as he left.

  “What’s his problem?” said one of the men. The way the tall guy left the room reminded him of how his father was always exiting rooms when he was around.

  “Just jealous, I’m sure,” said the other, who felt defiant, and strong, and more in love than ever.

  In twenty minutes, Gary will return to the apartment he is subletting and throw together some clothes into a suitcase, his boarding pass printed out next to it on the bed. When he’s finished packing, he’ll sit on the other side of the suitcase, palms to thighs, and play through what will happen when he arrives in New Orleans, the steps he will have to take to get from the airport to Algiers, the chaos that will greet him in his home and at the hospital, the feelings of others he will have to absorb, and his own feelings, the ones he will be forced to have or at least pretend to have. It is a battering ram of images thrusting against his brain.

  A half hour from that, he will be high again, and stretched out on his bed, lazily stroking himself. He will have missed his flight to New Orleans.

  Midday

  10

  By late August, most New Orleanians have grown accustomed to the summer heat. They are not fond of it, but they know it. It has been hot since April. Was there ever a time when it was not this hot in New Orleans? They can no longer recall. Their will has been broken. Wake up, it’s hot. All day, hot. Nighttime, it feels cooler, but it’s a lie; it’s still hot. And wet. Everyone’s skin glows. People feel sexy and miserable at the same time. Hide inside. Hydrate. Shield yourself. Too hot.

  On this day, though, a brave, hopeful, sweating, smiling man, neatly dressed, shirt, shorts, ironed, with brand-new impeccable white kicks, ignored the heat and escorted a woman two inches taller than himself through a sculpture garden outside the New Orleans Museum of Art, where they paused to examine a Renoir statue of Venus, the woman uttering, “The fairest of them all.” From there they made their way to a nine-hundred-year-old oak tree on the edge of City Park, the woman issuing only a mild complaint about the heat, because she was not a complainer, but it was hot. Nearby, swans fluffed themselves proudly in the bayou as the man spread out a blanket. On it he placed a bucket of fried chicken from McHardy’s and a chilled champagne split he’d picked up last minute from Rouse’s, though he knew the woman didn’t really like to drink during the day. But in his mind it just looked right. A bottle of bubbly for the lady. For the moment when Corey would put his plan in motion. To persuade this woman to let him move into her home.

  He straightened the edges of the blanket and looked up at Sharon, the swans behind her as opposite as could be. Sharon was not a preener. She was good as is, and she knew it.

  He held up the bottle to her. “All right, I see what you’re doing here,” she said, and gave him a crooked, sweet smile—a rarity from her lips, he thought—and he felt bolstered and warmed, because who doesn’t want to be seen, even if it is just for a moment, how valuable a flicker of recognition, especially by a person you admire, and more particularly by a woman who is tall and smart and strong. Once, when he watched her dress after they’d had sex, he told her she must have descended from the sun, and she had said, “You’re not wrong.”

  He knelt and popped the cork on the bottle. Sharon still hadn’t sat yet, and she watched him as he poured. Implacable as a pillar of bronze.

  “Not too much, now,” she said.

  “I know,” Corey said.

  “It makes me tired,” she said. “And I don’t want to lose my whole day.”

  “Just a taste, come on now,” he said, and he lifted a plastic cup toward her.

  “In a minute,” she said.

  “OK,” he said. “Well sit, anyway.” He didn’t know why she couldn’t simply relax. Here he was, trying to do something nice for her.

  Sharon folded those legs and thighs and torso and arms into an erect order in front of him. There was so much of her, but she was compact, he thought. Usually he liked the way she carried herself in the world. But today she had slipped into a kind of discomfort. She smacked a bug off her and grimaced.

  “I thought you liked being outdoors,” he said.

  “I did. I do. It’s just too hot today.”

  “Do you want to go? Because we can go.”

  “No,” she said. “I appreciate you doing this. I don’t know why you did, though.” She added quickly, “But it’s nice.”

  They tapped their plastic cups together and then sipped their champagne.

  “So listen, let’s talk about something,” he said.

  “See?” she snapped. “Uh-oh.”

  “No ‘uh-oh.’ This is a good thing, Sharon.” This was not going how he had pictured it at all. He could have backed off, he supposed, just dropped the subject and enjoyed the day. But he had made a sincere effort for her. She should give me a shot, he thought. Let me play my game.

  He took a breath and launched into his speech. About how he had been paying attention to her life these past six months, seeing what she needed and didn’t need from a man, trying to ascertain the way he could be the best man for her, and what he thought—what he believed—was that if he lived with her, he could do all the things for her that she couldn’t do for herself. He said, “I know how hard you work, baby, and I think I can make your life easier, every single day, and I’d like to do that for you.” He finished off his champagne. “I mean, I’d love to do that for you.”

  Sharon looked away from him, in the direction of the bayou, those swans, the palm trees, the oak trees, traffic on City Park Avenue beyond that. He waited for her to smile, to speak, to broadly embrace him. It seemed like her lips were trembling with something, but then they stilled.

  Did I make the wrong move? He panicked, reached for her hand, and squeezed it. She returned his grasp loosely. I did so much for you, he thought. I can’t please you. He looked at her face again, all of her elements composed before him, and realized something unexpected. He did love her. What were all these feelings if not love? He felt his heart quickly encircle with gold.

  Now, he thought, I’m in trouble.

  11

  Alex, at her parents’ apartment building, rushing through the courtyard beneath their home. She was on her way to see what she could get out of her mother. Information! She wanted nothing more than that.

  Barbra and Victor had moved to New Orleans nearly a year ago, into this quaint condominium complex in the Garden District, where, among other proprietary pleasures, there was a small bar that operated on the weekends, a place for all the northern expats to gather and sip their bourbon and spritzers and watch sports on a massive flat-screen television and talk about politics and pretend they were more liberal than they actually were; at least until they drank enough to stop pretending. Alex had come to visit them last Thanksgiving, at the end of a weeklong trip to the city, and she and her parents had spent one afternoon boozing it up in the lounge with their neighbors, admiring its intricate tiki bar décor, listening to them still talk about Hillary’s lies, as if they had any evidence one way or the other, as if they had run their own businesses in a pristine manner, as if none of them had ever had affairs or were dishonest themselves, as if they didn’t know where their own personal bodies were buried. Their language was coded and shaded. They claimed they had voted for her anyway. Better that than the other guy. But had they? They all called Alex “honey” and told her she was young and beautiful and to enjoy it while it lasted, because soon enough she’d look like them, old and spotted and bloated. At least they’d enjoyed the ride.

  It had been a completely absurd choice, this move. What were they doing there? Her parents had no connection to the city beyond her brother living on the Westbank. Yes, there was a grandchild there, but when had they ever cared about anyone but themselves? They had no curiosity about this city and its culture. Their health dictat
ed they couldn’t eat any of its food; they had never seemed interested in music of any kind, let alone jazz or soul, and also they hated the heat, which Alex’s mother complained about incessantly. They had not moved to Florida for that exact reason. Jesus! What were they doing there?

  And, according to Twyla, it was only Victor who expressed any interest in his grandchild; Barbra was lukewarm on Avery. They had sold their home in Connecticut—their big home, thought Alex, room after room after room—and said goodbye to what few friends they had.

  Vague reasons were offered: “Your father wanted a change,” her mother had insisted. And: “We’re simplifying, no more complications, let someone else mow the lawn and shovel the snow,” Barbra said, although, of course, neither of them had ever mowed the lawn or shoveled the snow, instead hiring a service to do it, nameless men clearing the way for them their entire lives. They packed up just a fraction of their belongings and put the rest in storage to move into this five-room condo. Who knew when they would be able to use any of that furniture again, if ever? But her mother could not bear to get rid of it. Her and her goddamn furniture.

  But their new home wasn’t half bad, Alex thought as she sped through the common space. The courtyard was overgrown, lovely, the plants freshly watered, birds-of-paradise and palm trees and hibiscus and bougainvillea and angel trumpets, looking so regal and delicate, with Spanish moss dripping everywhere, and rapturously entwined vines of varying kinds. A small, cool-looking saltwater pool surrounded by a dusty redbrick patio. Three sunbaked senior citizens idled in the water. She didn’t stop to greet them. She didn’t care about them. She was there to see her mother. I am in the throes of it, she thought. I am in the middle of something and I don’t get to exit until it’s done.

  Inside their apartment, Barbra was at the stove, stirring something. It could have been a hundred different possible meals out of a can. It would never get eaten. Alex’s mother never consumed more than a few bites of anything at a time. Alex had watched her not eat her entire life. Her father, he ate. Her brother, too. Alex ate more than her mother, but far less than her father. In Connecticut Barbra had only cooked out of obligation or necessity, or for show sometimes, or during a snowstorm. When required. Alex’s grandmother Anya had been there to do all the cooking instead. RIP, Anya. Mostly they ate out. A steakhouse her father favored. Alex was a vegetarian now.

  No more steak dinners for Victor, she thought. Her mother was still stirring, the spoon scraping across the bottom of the pot, the sound incessant and mournful and specific. On the windowsill three radiant green plants stretched their leaves and limbs up to the sun, the only sign of life in this home.

  “What are you making?”

  Her mother looked up at her, dazed, just noticing her arrival.

  “You know, I don’t even know,” she said. Her pale, moon-shaped face, old-fashioned, poetic, a head on a coin. Her giant cat eyes, lashes still long and black. The great nose job of 1973, and another in 1988. Short, dark, dyed black hair with a flip on the end, a cap-sleeved violet silk blouse with a bow, loose, flowing, stylish linen pants, and flats. Bright pink lipstick cracked at the edges of her lips. All her colors are off, thought Alex. That was unusual for her mother, who was always so posed and detail-oriented. The black unnaturally black, too obvious a dye job, the violet like a gumdrop, artificially colored, the pink glaring, a cocktail party, a young person’s color. You’re all wrong, Alex wanted to tell her.

  Alex looked in the pot.

  “It’s soup, Mom. Maybe lentil.”

  Her mother looked distressed.

  “Do you want any? I don’t think I could eat a thing. I don’t know why I was making it. I haven’t eaten anything in days. I guess I thought I should. But why soup? When it’s so hot out. I don’t even know what I’m doing. Will you please just eat this?”

  Alex sat down and let her mother serve her a bowl of lukewarm canned lentil soup. On par, truly, with her usual cooking, thought Alex. Barbra joined her at the table and sipped from an enormous glass of water filled with lemon slices. Ah, yes, and there’s her lunch, she thought. Alex nipped at her spoon politely, then asked after her father.

  “He isn’t any better. Neither here nor there. Awake and asleep at the same time. It’s so difficult to watch. How’s the soup?”

  “The soup’s fine.”

  Her mother wrung her hands. Rings on every finger, the skin wrinkled and pale and loose, her knuckles prominent. Her bones were trying to make a break from her body.

  “How long did you stay last night?”

  “Till late.”

  “Did you talk to the doctor about what we discussed?”

  “There didn’t seem to be an appropriate time.”

  “That makes no sense, Mom.”

  “He told me to leave and get some rest. I think I was getting in the way. And you know, those nurses are friendly, until they aren’t.” She drank half of the glass of water, then continued. “But I didn’t sleep last night, of course. I can’t. I wanted to sleep, I did. I wanted to sleep and eat. But I feel like I’m only living in this exact moment. Right now is now. And so to do anything but be exactly as I am right now is the only thing that feels correct.”

  Her mother looked genuinely devastated in a way that Alex had never witnessed in her before. He was hers, and she was his, and he was dying. This was the hard thing about her mother, her eternal, binding complication. She was certain Barbra really did love Victor, though he had been obviously terrible to her for decades. Alex was attracted to Bobby, but she knew better than to love him anymore. Still, Alex had a hard time arguing with love, even the foolish kind.

  Her mother let out one wistful sigh. Tears, rarely, from this woman. A sigh, that was the sound of a collapse. An avalanche, that sigh; the thunder of rocks down the side of a mountain in one gasp of air. Now, I shall be kind, thought Alex. It costs you nothing to be kind.

  “Do you want to go back to the hospital?” Alex asked.

  “Yes, please.”

  * * *

  The car’s air conditioning was no match for the New Orleans heat, even though Alex had a pricy rental. Her hotel wasn’t cheap either. She was using her miles on this trip. All of her miles, the ones she got in the divorce. She’d had her own miles, too, although far fewer than Bobby; she didn’t travel as much as he did for work, her job seemingly less important. It felt good to use his miles, which came from work trips and work dinners, but also probably from hotel rooms he’d used with women other than her, and expensive dinners he had shared with women other than her, and also, she suspected, massages from women other than her. And that’s why she was burning through them, these miles, like they were a kettle of water left too long on the stove, turning to steam. That hotel was air. This car was sweat. Those miles were gone.

  “How do you live like this?” said Alex. “In this heat.” She was gasping.

  “It’s terrible, isn’t it? I never go anywhere. I swear, I just stay at home by myself all the time.”

  Her mother was delicate next to her, folded into the bucket seat, a shrunken, fragile form, so light-seeming that Alex probably could have carried her to the hospital on her back. Would Barbra disappear entirely once Victor passed away?

  Don’t you leave me before you tell me the truth, thought Alex.

  “Thank you for driving me,” said her mother. “Thank you for taking the time out of your life to be here with me right now. I could have done it on my own, but it would have been hard, and there was no one else I would have wanted here but you.”

  “And Gary,” said Alex.

  “Sure. Gary, wherever he is.” Her mother waved a hand vaguely, toward wherever “wherever” was, then turned toward the window.

  Outside, live oaks dripped down St. Charles Avenue, a sensuous rainfall of limbs and leaves laced with last year’s Mardi Gras beads. Alex craned her head up at them.

  “Those trees are kind of sexy,” she said.

  “I suppose,” said Barbra. “It depends on how you feel
about trees.”

  They waited for a streetcar to pass. Someone on board snapped a picture, and Alex found herself waving at the rider, a desperate bid for recognition from the world outside of her family. What would I give to be just a tourist right now?

  As they idled, she thought again about the last time she was in town, at Gary and Twyla’s place. On Thanksgiving Day itself, her brother had to take a few business calls for some reason, and she could see Twyla was frustrated with him but wouldn’t say anything to his face. He kept getting up from the dinner Twyla had made at their house on Algiers Point, and lighting a cigarette outside on the front deck, the western edge of downtown New Orleans behind him, then jawing to whoever was on the other end. Sadie and Avery were on their own phones, probably living beautiful lives on another plane. I heard there was a jazz band playing somewhere in this town, she had thought wistfully, as her father hijacked the meal with another story about some financial, probably illegal, triumph of his that no one in the room could even pretend to care about except for Twyla, doting as she did on the family, nodding passionately to his every word, only occasionally glancing out the window, presumably at her husband. Barbra not eating, sipping her wine, placidly reapplying her lipstick, silent, possibly stewing in bitterness. “A toast to family,” Alex had said and raised her glass. It wasn’t a lie. Somewhere else there was a perfectly normal, connected family. Cheers to them. Not to these rotten times. She had used her miles then, too.

  “Twyla could have helped,” said Alex. The light turned green.