Looker
Page 3
But that would not be appropriate for someone in my position. For a professor. Though I’m hardly a professor. I’m a non-tenure-track lecturer at an overpriced, second-rate city school, teaching evening classes to returning students. The school seems to be struggling; I’ve heard rumors, and I can read the signs. My class, Survey of Western Verse II, 1850–Present, a standard in the literature program, was so small that the dean almost axed it at the start of the semester; I had another that was cancelled due to low enrollment. In the days just after Nathan left, when I veered from mania to despair and back again, I imagined using my extra time to take kickboxing classes at the local gym, transforming myself into a fighter, like the actress would do in one of her films. But I’ve gone nowhere near the gym, and I’m still the same person I was weeks ago. Aside from the financial blow, cushioned only by our still-joint savings account, all the class loss has done is make these days even emptier. I should have offered to teach anything—even Intro Composition to freshmen, which I swore I’d never teach again—if only to save myself from these long, blank days.
After class, I come back to my barely maintained, barely still elegant brownstone alone. I climb the stairs, nearly wheezing by the end. The wheezing is new—the consequence of reviving my grad school smoking habit after Nathan left. Though I’ve never thought, not even once, I should quit smoking; I’ve only thought, I should move. We always talked about moving when the baby came. Ha. If I were forced to move now, I’d have to leave the neighborhood—and in many ways, that would be a relief. To escape the entitled, ever-breeding bourgeoisie. I can’t sit in a café here, grading or reading, for twenty minutes without some mom coming to buy her kids overpriced pastries while managing them in loudly hushed tones. It does more than grate on my nerves—it drives a spike into my side. Even worse is to look up and see a cherubic face close to mine, eyes blinking at me, curious and killing.
If someone could walk by my window (thankfully they can’t; the most they can see from the street is the light from my lamps and the shadow of the slowly turning ceiling fan), they’d see a charmless place, full of Ikea furniture and shabbily stacked books. And a middle-aged woman, alone with a cat, glass of cheap wine in hand. A cliché, a “cat lady,” a laughingstock.
I never pursued money. I thought it would come to me. I did! I thought the life of the mind would deliver it up in a matter of years—that my PhD in literature, with a specialization in poetry, of all things, would elevate me in ways that weren’t merely intellectual. That, in addition to being feted and admired as a scholar of great renown, I would have job security. Health insurance. Steady, and steadily rising, income. “But who’s going to hire you?” Nathan would tease, secure in his practical Doctorate of Education program. I didn’t like to worry over such troublesome details. In grad school, Nathan and I would sit in the library with our heads bent over books, under the green glow of old-fashioned desk lamps. At a corner table, away from the rabble. As I read deeper into John Berryman’s The Dream Songs, I felt my cheeks flush and my heart rate accelerate. When I couldn’t contain my ecstatic fervor anymore—over the strange and glorious diction, the untamed turns of phrase—I shoved the book under Nathan’s nose as if to say, See? This is what matters. This. At the time, Nathan raised his eyebrows as he scanned the page, and when he finished, he nodded. “Good stuff,” he said, “very good,” as if he were praising a child’s efforts at drawing instead of the masterful set of poems I’d shared. Such passion for poetry I had back then! That was where “the life of the mind” took root: what a joke! I could roll on the floor in hysterics at such naïveté now, if it were at all funny. The life of the mind! FUCK the life of the mind.
*
In the morning, I head out for one of my long, slow walks. Ever since Nathan left, I’ve felt the urge to ramble—through our gentrified bubble, out to the edges where the natural foods stores and sparsely filled niche boutiques give way to cramped bodegas and dilapidated hardware stores. Past those, even, to the old warehouse district near the water, all the way down, once, to the waterfront park where enormous old cranes stand like sentinels over the few illegal fishermen on the pier. At first, going walking was just a way to not feel, after Nathan. Or a different way to feel—because I couldn’t not feel, really, feelings bombarded me, ruled me, yanked me here and there like a sad marionette—but to feel while moving in a forward direction somehow helped, gave me some sense of control. Walking pushed the misery along through my body, distracting me from my grief the way a deep sleep can, though without the sharp pain of waking up. Returning home at the end of a walk was much less horrible—it hurt, but in a dull, dry, mostly bearable way, that at least made me feel anchored in something, in my tired and aching body instead of my pulverized heart.
I once stopped in a church—in the early, desperate days—and pushed into the dim, silent interior. Got awkwardly to my knees on one of the velvet-padded knee rests and bent my head, and prayed, or tried to pray. What if the actress could see me now—what would she think? I wondered, kneeling there. Would she study me, as if for a potential future role? Take note of the angle at which I inclined my head? Or the way I clasped my hands together, like a child? The way my body shook with sobs, and shook harder, perhaps, at the thought of her watching?
Or would she glance at me and simply shake her head? Peasants, she’d think. Always throwing themselves on the mercy of the divine.
Nothing happened in the church that day. No angels descended on a wave of iridescent light. No booming voice told me I’d recover, that everything would turn out fine. I struggled to my feet after a while, feeling, at least, wholly cried out for the time being.
Coming back from my walk a few hours later, I see a large cardboard box in front of the actress’s house. It wasn’t there when I left, but how long has it been sitting there? What did I miss? I breeze right past my own building and speed-walk to number 202. Like everyone else around here, like one of the people, the actress puts out her family’s castoffs on a fairly regular basis—books they’ve finished, shoes and clothes they’ve outgrown, furniture they no longer want, etc.—for passersby to pick up. Our neighborhood is a kind of slow-trickle flea market. You can grab a board game from the steps of one house, then walk a block or two and find a cute handbag. Or a DVD collection. Or a Lego set. Nathan and I found this incredibly charming, not to mention useful, when we first moved here. The actress—or one of her staff, I’m sure—arranges her giveaways neatly in a box, or hangs them from the spikes of the fence, or lines them up below it, on the sidewalk itself. I’ve snagged every single thing of hers I’ve seen, sometimes coming home with armfuls of sweaters and kids’ rain boots, or teetering up the stairs (once) with a heavy, ornate side table. I like to think I’ve gotten everything she’s ever put out, but is that even possible? Surely I’ve missed things when I was at work, or out of town, or simply not paying enough attention. As I get closer to the box, my heart pounding in my chest, I wonder if anyone beat me to this particular haul. The box is still there, but is everything in place? I wish I could present the actress with an inventory list so I could know for certain that I have it all.
Then a neighbor turns out of her own gate, right in front of me, and blocks my view of the box. She’s heading straight for it. I arrive just behind her, panting and sweating. “Hi,” she says, but I’m staring down intently, cataloguing the contents. There’s a pile of bound and published screenplays of 1990s films like Glengarry Glen Ross and Sex, Lies, and Videotape; a small rectangular mirror framed in mother-of-pearl; and a wooden elephant on wheels. This is a good haul. A very good haul. I finally look up at the neighbor. She’s around my age, with a head of frizzy gray-brown hair and horn-rimmed glasses sliding down her nose. There’s nothing for you here, sister, I want to snarl. Move along. I watch tensely as she bends down and picks up the top screenplay, the one for Glengarry Glen Ross. As she flips the pages, I stand there saying, Drop it. Drop it. Drop it. In my head, over and over. Finally, she looks up, smiles awkwardly, and
. . . just when I think she might try to walk off with the prize, just when I imagine ripping it from her hands . . . she tosses it carelessly back in the box—like it’s trash!—and walks off. I want to lean against the actress’s fence in relief, but there’s no time. I pick up the whole box and carry it home, feeling happiness well up inside me for the first time in days.
At first, Nathan teased me lightheartedly about my fixation on the actress’s discarded belongings, but by the end I was sure he meant his remarks to hit my tender spots. “Why do you want that thing?” he said once, frowning at a colorful rattle I’d collected. This was after failed IVF cycle number four. Or five. I’m not sure. They all blur together after a while. What he meant was, Why do you want that stuff if you can’t even have a baby? I accused him of being cruel. He said he hadn’t meant it that way, it was just that we didn’t have the room to store extra things, but of course we did—we had the “baby’s room.”
That’s not what we called it. We called it “the study” because there was a (mostly unused) desk in there. We called it “the guest room” because there was a twin bed in there, the one I’d dragged with me from one apartment to the next since grad school. We called it “the storage room” because there were two closets in there, crammed with family photo albums, old books, clothes, and a beach umbrella for our infrequent trips to the shore. But we never, ever, called it “the baby’s room,” though we both knew very well that’s what it would be, should be, should have been. Of course, in my own head, I’d already renovated it—thrown out the old twin, finally, organized the closets and put unwanted items, the refuse of our younger years, out front, and moved the desk to a corner of the living room. Put up a playful border. Installed a crib with a mobile of black-and-white squares hanging over it. Added a dresser and changing table, and a child’s small table and chairs. I’d even moved things around—in my head—throughout the years of our trying. Put the crib closer to the window, then away from it to lessen the noise from the street. Pulled down one border, a girly one, and put up another with trains and airplanes. Then I replaced that with a gender-neutral one patterned with triangles, circles, and squares in grays and blacks—like the mobile. I’d patted my round belly. Smoothed my hands over the firm dome of flesh. Sunk into the tacky calico-patterned glider and rocked myself to sleep.
Later, I saw one pair of worn, thong-style Birkenstocks out in front of their house. A woman’s size 8, I’d guess. Probably hers. Got ’em.
*
Tonight the long-lashed, dark-eyed Bernardo looked at my left hand and asked, “What happened to your wedding band?” They’re like that, my students, bluntly curious about my life. Mary, an older woman with cropped gray hair, shook her head and tsked at him. I flashed my best game-face smile and said, “Don’t worry, Bernardo, I’m just having it cleaned.” He nodded like he believed me but Mary gave me a look. My performance must have faltered somewhere. Was there a false note in my voice? Was my smile too big? I had to remember to wear my damn ring next time. And make sure it looked extra-shiny.
We used to sleep spooned together all night long. If Nathan flipped over, I would flip, too. We were always touching: my belly pressed against his back, his back rooted to my belly.
The actress’s house is dark tonight. Maybe they’ve gone upstate for the weekend. They’ll stop at a farm stand on the way to buy fresh corn and tomatoes, melons and blueberries. The farmer will say, “I know your face!” in his rustically charming manner—so much better than the hard stares she gets in the city. She’ll smile under the brim of her hat and bounce the baby gently on her hip as I’ve seen her do. Her husband will usher them all back to the safety of the car. They’ll drive down a wooded lane. Step into a tastefully furnished getaway cabin. Deep peace in the shade of trees. Sweet familial harmony. Anonymity at last! The actress will cast off her hat and laugh. Cut.
If it were a certain kind of nineties movie, though, things would go horribly wrong. Some leering man would come to the door one evening asking politely for help with his car but sending chills up the actress’s spine. They would refuse him, and then, in the dead of night, he’d come back and start a campaign of subtle terror against them. The children would huddle in a closet. The ineffectual city dad would stand by the door, sweat beading his forehead, fireplace poker in hand. And the actress, wide-eyed, would look out at the darkness through a crack in the curtains; she’d scream when the man’s pale face popped into view, right up against hers but for the thin layer of glass.
But no, the actress is still around—I run into her on the street the next morning. “Running into her” makes it sound as if we’re old friends who would stand on the sidewalk for a moment, trading updates on our personal lives. As if I’d remark on how beautifully the baby is gaining weight—You’re breastfeeding him? (Of course, of course.) As if she would lay a cool, dry hand on my arm and ask how I’d been doing, in a knowing voice. As if her knowing about the terrible breakup could make the clenched sadness in me dissipate, at least for a little while. As if I’d feel comfortable enough to tear up a little, right there on the sidewalk, with the actress’s hand on my arm.
Nothing like that happens, of course. I don’t “run into her”: I’m leaving the house, just opening my gate, when she whisks by wearing black cropped pants with high heels and a flowing blue silk top. Water, I think, watching her move. Is she on her way to a hair appointment? A meeting in the city? A consultation about a script? I’m just leaving to go to the grocery store in the worn brown-and-red-striped cotton dress I think of as my summer uniform. In forty minutes or so I’ll return, lugging bags full of “single woman” food: one bunch of broccoli, instant couscous, red beans, basmati rice, boxes of frozen lasagna and palak paneer, and one small bag of Doritos, my “treat.” When the actress passed by, she didn’t turn or nod or make any gesture to show that she’d noticed me. But I know she did. I stand and watch her all the way up the block.
She was wearing our lipstick today, as usual. I say “our” because, while I doubt her lipstick is L’Oréal’s #762 Divine Wine, it is a velvety reddish-brown matte like mine. And she seems to wear it all the time, like I do—whether she’s running an errand or going out for the night. I wear mine everywhere, too—I put it on and watch it bring my face to life. Nathan used to laugh at me whenever I said I looked like death without my lipstick—but it’s true. It’s always been true, even when I was younger. He might agree with me now, if he could see the haggard woman who greets me in the mirror every morning. Go ahead and paint your lips, honey, he’d say, sucking down one of his kale smoothies.
Later that same night, I pause by her house on my way home from work. Lights on in the kitchen. The actress stands at the island, opening a bottle of wine. Children in bed. The husband upstairs somewhere. Alone with a bottle of wine, how luxurious. I’ll be alone with one, too, in a few minutes, but the quality of her aloneness differs from mine. Hers is fuller: surrounded, swaddled even—an island on whose shores laps a vibrant, busy sea. Her aloneness is temporary; mine is infinite. Mine spreads out from the center like a puddle, muddying everything it touches. Even the cat shrinks back, slinks to dry land. But there the actress is on her cozy island, pouring a generous glass of good white wine that’s been chilled just for her by some thoughtful staff member who then slipped away to leave her in peace. She takes her first sip while standing there, and then sips again, quickly, like it’s too delicious to wait. When have I tasted wine like that?
In the early days of our relationship, Nathan and I went to Napa for a long weekend. I was presenting a paper at the MLA conference in San Francisco, so we rented a car one day and drove through the rolling golden-brown hills, stopping at every vineyard whose name we even remotely recognized. We were drunk within an hour. There was one wine, a red, maybe a Pinot Noir? We loved it. We bought a whole case and dealt with the hassle of shipping it home. But once we were back, sitting at the table in my sparsely furnished studio, trying the first sip from the first of the bottles, it tasted all w
rong: vinegary, acidic. Cheap, though it wasn’t. Not at all like it had tasted out there—full of warmth—a glass of deep, mellow, earthy richness.
I bite into a Red Delicious apple—Nathan’s favorite. It’s mealy, as they always are. Tastes gray. I have no idea what he sees in them, or why I bought six of these at the grocery store. They were right next to the crisp and tasty Fujis, but I couldn’t help grabbing them. Knowing I would hate them. Knowing I would take a single bite and throw them one after the other into the trash.
*
Early in her career, the actress was praised for tackling complicated roles. Damaged women—women who’d been abused or raped but who went on fighting valiantly through life. Tough, unlikable women, women with attitude and chutzpah and strong moral beliefs. Women who could stand up to a school board or a corporate tycoon but who, privately, were addicts or bad mothers or engaged in minor fraud. You love them, but you also want to keep them at arm’s length. Is that who I am? Do I deserve to be loved, or even liked? Nathan has said no. And now I hear the world repeat it after him: no, no, no, no, no. Every day since he left. It echoes through the streets and against the walls of the buildings and comes back to me, smacking me squarely in the face: NO.
My body, also, has firmly said no. You are not worthy of carrying life. You are not one of those women, the ones entrusted with sacred purpose. Or is it encrusted? Am I not worthy, even, of being encrusted with sacred purpose, with the life that clings and ages and erodes a woman from the moment it forms?
So what made the actress turn from those roles, those admirable lives in the gray area, to those that exist only in black and white? Or electric blue, like the costume she wears in the new blockbuster. What made her choose to become fodder for bus-side posters? Money, I’d guess. Ambition. Middle age (or close enough). Those kids. All those kids—they have to be fed.