I was in a good mood, because I’d figured out Stefan’s profession. We’d just passed each other near the firm where I worked. When I asked what he was doing downtown, Stefan said, “I work here,” and pointed to the building behind him. “I’m a detective.”
The building was one of the older ones, with a respectable brick façade and a touch of grime. There was no signage to indicate its use, but Stefan was proud to talk about it. It was a bond company he worked for. He was a bounty hunter. He described how he tracked down people who had skipped bail and, opening the door of a car parked at the curb, took out a pair of handcuffs and a white bulletproof vest. I worried he might blow his cover, but I guess he didn’t have one.
That’s what I was thinking about on my way to meet Jean. She had found a job as a part-time graphic designer. It paid peanuts, and she alternately liked and hated it. Some nights we would meet at a small bar we liked, where the drinks were a little too strong.
When I walked in, I couldn’t find her. I sat on a less-than-clean bar stool and chatted with the bartender. He was new, and he talked the sort of never-ending babble that bartenders usually just listen to. A petite blonde woman came and sat on the stool next to me.
I was looking for a way out of the bartender’s soliloquy. He was going on about the various women who had done him wrong, and the blonde was nodding along, as if she knew exactly what he meant. “So you know how it is, do you?” I asked her. That was how it started, the blonde woman checking me out, me checking her out. It felt good to flirt. For a moment I feared Jean would see us—me leaning into the concave of the blonde woman’s body, the tips of her long hair grazing my arm. And then I realized that I wanted her to see.
She walked in briskly, so that I saw her easily from the corner of my eye. I touched the woman’s back, I don’t know why. Briefly, but long enough. Jean saw.
She didn’t stop short, catch herself mid-step, look shocked, or stare at the blonde woman. None of that. Jean just raised her eyebrows. Her eyelids slid down a bit over her dark eyes in that amused way they had. I doubt she’d remember, but it was the look she had given me when I asked her, in the crowded coffee shop the day we met, if I might join her at her table. That’s the picture I see in my mental scrapbook. That same skeptical look.
And I was proud when Jean walked up to us confidently and gave me an equally confident kiss. The blonde woman made herself invisible in a showy way and left the bar soon after. Jean refused to mention her, and instead we talked about good news: Jean’s work was being considered for an exhibit.
“In Miriam Choi’s gallery. She saw some of my stuff in New York last year, and she’s interested. She’s going to come over and have a look. I told her I was almost done with Happy Family.”
“What’s that?”
“My painting. The one you bump into every time you walk through the porch. It’s called Happy Family. I have to finish it. She’s going to try to review my stuff next month sometime. I’m so lucky she happened to go to my show last year.”
It was good to see Jean enthusiastic. The painting could bring that out in her, and I was sure that if it would just turn out the way she hoped, if she could just be pleased with the outcome, she would feel good about herself and we would be happy.
We sat at the bar relishing our mutual contentment. For about two hours we were having a good time, and for the next two hours we were still having a good time but in a fearful way, knowing it would have to end. We were determined not to let it. We kept eating bar food and drinking.
When it was time for the place to close, Jean said she didn’t want to go home. “Sometimes that house just gives me the creeps. For all I know, Eli’s there drilling holes or something.” Then she said, “Sometimes I just can’t bear walking into that house.” So I told her, “Fine, let’s not go home.”
We went to one of the parks, I don’t remember which one; there were a lot like that, with a basketball court, a baseball field, benches, homeless people, and restrooms that smelled. We made out on a bench. It must have been 3 a.m.
We slept there, under a tree in the park. It was chilly, and the grass was damp, and the tree roots were like knuckles in my side. Tucked into each other’s arms, we yawned at the night dew and shivered ourselves to sleep. In my dreams I saw Jean looking at me the way she had in the bar, the way she had on the day we met. When we woke up it was six, and people had already begun jogging and walking dogs. Jean didn’t complain when I suggested we go home.
I was chopping a large onion and having trouble; Stefan still had our big knife, and neither Jean nor I felt like asking him about it. A Styrofoam coffee cup, an empty doughnut box, and a sports magazine lay on the kitchen table. They weren’t ours. Somebody had been in our house. At first we’d assumed it was Eli, though there were no signs of immediate damage. We turned on faucets with caution, looked warily for nails underfoot. We’d briefly wondered if it had to do with Stefan, but he didn’t seem the doughnut-eating sort.
Though I’d told her all I knew about him, Jean still thought Stefan suspicious. She insisted she had heard odd noises coming from below—a sound like a dull saw going back and forth. She talked about it enough that I myself had begun to wonder: perhaps Stefan posed some sort of threat.
But for the moment we let Stefan off the hook, abandoned the investigation. We had other things on our minds. Jean had just finished throwing a tantrum—brief and fierce as a tropical storm. No specific reason, just the general state of our life together. Just my humming or putting a dish in the wrong cabinet could set her off. We were growing tired of each other, though at the time we wouldn’t have even considered that a possibility.
Now Jean was listening to the Christian station, nodding along as she macerated a clove of garlic. I watched her pick up the phone and dial a number.
“I wish our fights didn’t always end with you ignoring me,” I said, sweeping the onion into a frying pan. “I wish we could kiss and make up.”
“Hi, I’m calling in response to what Hal from Corvallis said? I think—Jean. Yes, I’ll hold.”
I said, “I’m standing right here, Jean. If you want to talk about it, let’s talk about it.”
“Quiet. They’re putting me on the air.”
“Jean—”
“Hi. Jean. Portland. Hi, I just wanted to say that I agree with Hal, and I have some advice for him. . . . My background? Well, let’s see. I, too, am married—How long? Forever. Ha ha. No, actually I’ve been married, let’s see . . . eleven years. Eleven years. To the most wonderful man, and I’d say we’ve had a very successful marriage, so—Oh, do I? Well, thank you, we got married young. But my husband—His name? Well . . . Eli. Oh, he’s a carpenter. Yeah, he built everything in our house . . . even the twins’ bunk beds. Yes, it is convenient. He chops the wood himself. In fact, he grows the trees. We have a tree farm. He’s something of a Paul Bunyan type. You know, big and muscular, hairy, wears flannel.”
I turned to Jean. “I hope I at least get equal airtime.” She listened into the receiver for a moment. “Well, what I want to tell Hal is, frankly, I was worried by his blind trust of his wife. Yes. I was concerned about his reluctance to discuss with her the problems he mentioned. Communication is everything, Hal. You need to be as open and honest as possible. Because, take it from me, you have no idea what kind of things your wife might be keeping from you.”
I stared at Jean. I allowed myself to wonder—in a brief flicker of thought—about Stefan, and, just as quickly, pushed the idea out of my mind.
Jean listened into the receiver for a moment. “Well, sure, shared faith is important, but that’s just a tiny part of it. And I mean, let’s face it, no marriage is worth it if you don’t have great sex.” Jean turned to me, unfazed. “They cut me off.”
“Look, Jean, just tell me what you want. If it’s the house you hate so much, we’ll move. If it’s the weather, we’ll leave. All right? Will that help?”
She said, “You can’t just run away. It’s like I told Hal fr
om Corvallis. You can’t hide from problems. You have to try to work them out.”
But what was there to work out? Jean refused to believe that things happened from within, that a person could cry for no reason, that people fall out of love. In fact, this happens all the time. People become angry about something that yesterday made them merely shrug. A man looks at a woman he once loved and decides she is incorrigibly ugly.
This was nothing I could accept. If only, I told myself, I could have laughed at her phone call, been in on the joke. But it was her joke, not mine.
They came banging on the door at 2 a.m. I was so tired I didn’t even hear it, but Jean, still half asleep, undid the latch. She didn’t even ask who it was. The next thing I knew she was shaking me. “Geoff, wake up.” Her hair covered her shoulders. I squinted up at her and she asked, “Is Stefan in here?”
“No. Why?”
“The police are wondering.”
I got up to talk to them. Jean was already falling back asleep, crawling back under the covers.
The police wouldn’t tell me why they wanted Stefan, but they assured me that we were in no personal danger. I assumed it had to do with the bounty hunting. I was too tired to explain it to Jean. At any rate, she was asleep. The next morning she said, “I had a dream about people banging on the door. Men in uniform.”
I said, “Oh, really? Tell me about it,” but she claimed she couldn’t remember. I was sure she knew she hadn’t dreamt it. It was just her way of taunting me, seeing how much I dared not to tell her. I played along, saying nothing. She was flaunting secrecy, testing the limits of reticence.
Later, out of the blue, Jean remembered something she’d been meaning to tell me. “I got the knife back from Stefan.”
I’d come home earlier than usual and stopped out front to admire a particularly large slug. Our car was coming from the other direction, Jean driving and someone else in it. I straightened up, my shoes sinking into the soaked grass. The mud smelled ripe.
Jean parked in front of me, and I watched a plump gray-haired woman emerge from the passenger’s side. A baggy silk outfit covered her in dark folds. She held out her hand and said, “Miriam Choi.”
“Hi, I’m—”
The car door slammed, and Jean said, “This is Geoff,” a bit dismissively, I thought. It occurred to me that perhaps she had wanted me out of the picture. Now Miriam would associate her with some guy who hung around on the curb examining slugs.
“How do you do.”
“Come on up, Miriam,” Jean was saying. “There’s a beautiful view of the hills.” Upstairs, she unlocked the door to our apartment. Eli was asleep on the couch.
He sat up when he heard us enter. “Oh,” Jean said calmly. “Miriam, this is Eli.”
Eli looked young for his age—or older than his age, depending on which of his features you focused on. That is, we had no idea how old he really was. His pudgy, square-jawed face could seem so tired and strained you’d think he’d look ten years younger if he just got some rest. But then, if you decided that the lines on his face were from age rather than from fatigue, you might think that he was in relatively good shape, still youthful, his round cheeks still boyish, his hair not entirely gray.
On this particular day he was looking about thirty-five. His painter’s pants were muddy, and he had taken off the security-lens glasses he always wore. He ignored Miriam, rubbed his eyes, and asked, “Is Stefan in here?”
“What is it with Stefan?” I demanded. “The police were asking the same thing a few weeks ago.”
“Yeah,” said Eli. “They told me. They said that they sometimes come in the middle of the night, since there’s a better chance the person will be home. Or did you see them the day they had their little stakeout?”
I recalled the doughnut box and the Sports Illustrated. Jean became tense. Not only were we ruining her business meeting, but it was possible her personal safety was in peril. “Is he a wanted criminal or something?” she asked. “Because if he is I think we have a right to know. Our lives could be in danger.”
“No, no, no,” Eli assured us. “I’ve been looking into it, and it seems he’s just not yet a U.S. citizen and his visa is expired or something. Those were immigration guys you saw. He just has to get his papers in order, but I think he’s been avoiding it. You know, hiding from the authorities. That’s what I want to talk with him about.”
Jean shook her head in a way that indicated both sympathy and vexation. “I’m sorry about this, Miriam. Here, let me take your coat.”
“I was wondering what he was up to,” I said to Eli, taking off my jacket and following Jean to the coat closet. She had opened the door and was looking perturbed.
Stefan was huddled in the closet, the least dapper I had ever seen him.
“This is Stefan,” Jean said to Miriam, and handed Stefan both of the coats. She touched Miriam’s elbow. “Why don’t we go out to the studio, and I’ll show you what I’ve been working on.”
Jean walked away with Miriam, who looked only slightly confused. Stefan poked out his head. “Are the police gone?”
“They’re gone. You can come out now.” I turned to Eli for corroboration. Eli said, “There are no immigration officials here, Stefan.”
Trying not to sound flustered, I said, “I understand that you have keys to the apartment, Eli, but, Stefan, how did you get in here?”
Stefan pushed back the bottom of the longer coats to reveal a large hole in the back of our closet. “I carved a tunnel,” he whispered with affected generosity, hoping, I guess, that if Eli heard him he would consider it an improvement and not make him pay for damage.
“Stefan,” Eli said, “we need to straighten this thing out.” I watched Stefan step out from among my coats and Jean’s jackets and wondered at what had happened to my home. It had been transformed into a stakeout for cops, a secret tunnel for fugitives, and, to top it off, the back porch had become a “studio.” But what bothered me more was how Jean had introduced me to Miriam. With that same exasperated tone: This is Geoff, Eli, Stefan. As if I were just one of so many troublesome men in her life. She hadn’t bothered to explain that I was the important one. That I, not Eli or Stefan, lived there. That I had more claim than either of them to this bit of space. And to her.
For hours on end, Jean would sit next to a space heater on the porch, putting the finishing touches on Happy Family. The storm windows were permanently fogged. Her completed works sat draped in white sheets around her. Happy Family sat in front of her like a king among the plebeians—bigger and brighter, full of ambitious dreams.
Jean was still waiting to hear from the gallery. I was convinced it would be a yes, since Miriam had made such encouraging comments, but Jean had begun to prepare herself for the worst. Whenever the phone rang she jumped. She wouldn’t answer it, because she was afraid of receiving bad news. She listened to the Christian station for hours at a time.
When I came home that day she was in the living room, crying. I assumed it had been a no. “Did Miriam call?” I asked timidly.
“No,” she answered. “Who cares about Miriam.”
I went over to hold her, asked her what was wrong.
“Everything,” she said. Everything was wrong with the house. If she could just get out of it, she said.
She thrust something into my hand. It was a wedding photo, dusty and scratched. Looking closer, I saw that the man was Eli, looking especially boyish, with a shiny-eyed bride at his side. Even with a tux on he wore those thick-lensed security-style glasses. Behind him was the same house we were in now, though in much better shape, still wearing its original coat of paint.
“It was years ago,” Jean said. “They lived together in this house.”
“I didn’t even know Eli was married.”
“Divorced. She took the kids and moved to some other state. Stefan said that’s what Eli told him.”
“Where did you get the photo?”
“I found it in the tunnel. It must have fallen through a c
rack a long time ago.”
“The tunnel?”
“In the closet.”
“What were you doing in the tunnel?!”
“Nothing. I was curious.”
“Curious? Jean, you could get hurt!”
It was when she grabbed back the photo that I noticed her wrists. The skin was indented, red from friction.
“What are these marks?”
She sighed, bored. “Stefan was showing me his handcuffs.”
I stared at her. “What the hell is going on with you and Stefan?”
“I was spying. He caught me.”
“You’ve been spying on Stefan?”
She started crying again. “I thought he might be a threat to us or something. I wanted to know what he was doing.”
“Why can’t you just sit back and mind your own business? Why are you always looking for something to worry about? Why are you always poking around for something bad?” I took a deep breath. “What did he do to you?”
“He didn’t notice until today. Anyway, he’s harmless. We were just playing. He taught me some self-defense moves. How can you be thinking of Stefan at a time like this?” She cried harder. “Don’t you see?” Jean held out the picture. “A picture can’t preserve anything.”
Angry and confused as I was, I wanted to show understanding. I looked at the snapshot and said, “You’re right. Nothing can bring a photo back to life.”
She said, “Everyone knows that.” She stood up and walked through the kitchen, through the back door, onto the porch. I didn’t realize she had taken the big silver knife from the butcher block.
She slashed the painting in half, then again and again. I found her when it was already too late. When I asked her what she was doing, she just said, “What an ugly picture. I can’t stand how ugly it is.”
I didn’t tell her to stop. I knew how good destruction can feel, like knocking a pile of building blocks to the ground.
Calamity and Other Stories Page 11