Ecstatic

by Victor La Valle

  – A woman says your mother has had friendship with her husband.

  – Did she call it friendship?

  – No she did not.

  I shut the book then put it in my lap. My breath smelled bad even though I’d brushed my teeth this morning, so I tried not to breathe on her but then remembered that this was my grandmother; not every woman was a potential partner.

  – I’m always glad to see how much you like books, she said.

  – How do you stay so thin, Grandma?

  She sighed. – You know I have always wanted more weight. They called me skinny names when I was young.

  – I would give you some of mine if I could.

  – I have always been trapped between small and smallest. She put up two threadlike hands to show the parameters.

  – People expect me to stay somewhere between bigger and bigger forever.

  – Maybe your sister will stop the fight, Grandma said.

  – She’ll learn how. I did.

  – Your mother has been doing so well for a long time.

  – Yes?

  – I just don’t want her to now make new problems. My sadness comes from your pain.

  – I like the way my boxes smell. Thank-you.

  Grandma nodded. – I will spray them every day.

  She took the book from my lap then set it facedown on my pillow. The cover showed a hazy painting of children wearing grotesque masks. She didn’t think much of the subject matter, I guess, but then all she read was tabloids. – Will you get a job? Grandma asked.

  – I’ll apply for some tomorrow.

  – A safe one.

  – I want to move furniture.

  – Oh, you will break your back.

  – I worked even after I stopped going to school, Grandma. I cleaned houses in Ithaca.

  – Why don’t you do that here? That’s no danger.

  – Moving is like cleaning. I like to see things get organized.

  – How long did you work like that. Houses in Cornell?

  –The last two years.

  –Two years! Such time. Why didn’t we know?

  – Because I didn’t tell you.

  – We believed in your letters. You wrote us about classes.

  – But you never asked to see my grades. I touched my knees. What made you come up in September? I asked.

  – Your sister begged us to take the time.

  Of the noises outside Grandma and I ignored most of them. I was an expert at it and she was the grandmaster.

  – Being a moving man is hard, she said.

  – I could get an easier job, but it won’t pay any better.

  – Not easy, she said. You should labor. So much of your problem would be solved. Your grandfather toiled harder when he was sick and it always healed him.

  I nodded. There were many suggestions. Everyone wanted to make me better, but we couldn’t even name the problem.

  3

  I met Lorraine on the 6 train when it was between 14th Street and 23rd. We were in a tunnel, but I choose to remember this as meeting when it was dark.

  Sunday, October 8th, my mother woke with bruises on her cheeks because the married Haitian woman was a better fighter.

  That morning we sat nearly together in the living room, with Mom, Grandma and I on the sectional couch. Nabisase on the floor eating cereal from a yellow bowl in her lap.

  My mother and sister talked, but I was quiet just like Grandma. When anyone’s tea was finished I made more. Grandma convinced Nabisase to let her comb and braid her hair. In this way we hoped to apologize to Nabisase and even Mom.

  My mother and grandmother were foreigners, essentially, so they had an alien’s attitude about forgiveness. Mom apologized and expected that all bad feeling was soothed. But, being Americans, my sister and I expected contrition. Saying sorry was fine, but tears were better. This is a country of moral failures, not simple mistakes.

  But Mom only said, – I didn’t mean to fight. Forgive me.

  That’s it.

  Then she and Grandma left to clean the bathroom, mow the yard, keep living.

  Leaving my sister and I as mystified as a Baptist with a Buddhist groom.

  Our living room was painted red, but in the low register. Nearly crimson. It was a serious little chamber; only more so with my sister in it.

  –This family needs church, my sister said.

  – Awww. I groaned, ground my teeth, gripped the couch cushion then collapsed.

  – Let’s get dressed, Nabisase commanded.

  – You should at least ask me.

  – Wear a suit, she said.

  – I’ve only got one and it’s dirty.

  Mom and Grandma weren’t going. – We did our time in that institution, Mom insisted.

  When I hid in the boiler room I hoped my dithering would make us miss the preacher’s call, but Nabisase appeared carrying my shoes and black socks. I ducked into Grandma’s closet and my sister brought me a tie. A thirteen-year-old girl haunted me.

  This had nothing to do with religion; if this had been Saturday she’d insist we go join a synagogue. On Monday it would be to attend a school board meeting for Community School District 29. A teenager’s natural talent is for blending tedium with enmity.

  Unfortunately in Queens it was possible to indulge this impulse for Holy Ghosts or Holy Rollers at any time. I couldn’t delay us out of a sermon. There were seven churches in a one-mile radius from our home; even one that operated from midnight to six A.M.

  Storefronts, trailers on the side of the road, established brick venues with gabled rooftops and parking lots. Christ was here. I later discovered that Queens was much like the South. Places where there is one God and he tolls for thee.

  There was a church three blocks away. Close enough that Nabisase and I walked even though I didn’t want to.

  On the corner of 229th Street and 147th Avenue there was a small brick building that might have been mistaken for a speakeasy rather than a church. It had no windows and only one gray metal door in front. The sign on the gate that surrounded the church read: Apostolic Church of Christ. A Church with Old Time Powers.

  –These people actually believe in God, I told her. Do you understand that?

  I didn’t want to attend a service just to hear my sister rant to the pastor afterwards. Screaming about how much she hated Mom’s corrupt behavior at the picnic.

  Nabisase would do that because she believed the church was here to serve her, not the other way round. If she knew that selfcenteredness was a sin she’d never have gone inside. Airing family distress seemed like the wrong reason to attend anyway and, more to the point, embarrassing. I really wanted to avoid that kind of thing in Rosedale. I thought I came off pretty well at the cookout so I wanted to make more good impressions, not fewer.

  As my sister opened the church door I ran away. Slowly. Two blocks to the bus stop.

  I went to the subway via a gypsy van to Jamaica then an E train from Parsons Boulevard. Since it was Sunday and I couldn’t look for work, I’d decided to buy a second suit. They were only $100 for everything. Not including shoes and socks. I transferred at Lexington Avenue to the 6. Where I met Lorraine. A little shredded paperback in her hands.

  I sat next to her so I could be sure she wasn’t reading a hair pamphlet or a cosmetics catalog or a douche brochure. I don’t know.

  Where we sat the train car smelled pleasantly like cinnamon because of two small girls whose hands and cheeks were iced and sticky from pastries. That seemed like a good omen for a fat man. Even better when the cover of her book showed the words, Translated from the Russian by Andrew R. MacAndrew.

  – How do you like the story? I asked her.

  Lorraine turned her face to me, but not her body.

  I don’t want to make too much of her; Lorraine was on her way to being as heavy as me. We had the same shape. Just she was six inches shorter. Her face was nearly lost in these frizzy hairs that dangled from the sides of her head. She lurched forward so m
uch as she sat that her nipples nearly touched her belly button. Lorraine was a shlump and tremendously glamorous. I wanted to cry over her feet because I was so thankful that she’d turned around. More so when she kept listening to me.

  She was reading a book of stories by Nikolai Gogol so I told her about his novel, Dead Souls.

  That when he’d finished the first third his mind began to twist, instead of just being a good story he was convinced that his book was meant to save the Russian people. When he realized this was nonsense he burned the unpublished pages, most of the second third, then starved himself to death in a religious fervor. The year was 1852.

  Lorraine didn’t find the tale very compelling, but she liked the fact that I knew it. Most of the guys she dealt with divided their time between PlayStation games and good weed. I couldn’t tell a woman with that kind of bias that I’d rather be discussing ghost stories. My freshman lit class had taught me enough to approximate erudition.

  We spoke on the telephone most evenings. Lorraine was a college student and in class during the day. I was never allowed to ring her because she had a volatile roommate studying to be a veterinarian. A guy. She said she lived in the dorms, but I sure didn’t believe her. Because I didn’t have her phone number I felt powerless. Whenever she chose Lorraine could stop calling, then where would I be?

  Every conversation I asked her to spend the night with me. For two weeks she waffled, but why else were we talking.

  Two weeks to wear her down.

  She suggested this motel with a view of the Cross Bronx Expressway.

  Snug between a furniture warehouse and an abandoned furniture warehouse Red Penny Motel looked positively high-toned. Seventy-five rooms, but only two lights were on. Twenty-six cars in the parking lot. The night was so cold that my nose had numbed and I didn’t get to smell this rich city.

  I walked into the parking lot. Probably the first person over the age of sixteen who’d ever done such a thing. The bus stop was seven blocks away, and calling a gypsy cab would have been a waste.

  The lobby entrance was cramped down by the giant penny slung above the doors. Eight feet across with a large Abe Lincoln whose nose was misshaped long and had a pointed beard, more Devil than the long-interred emancipator. Maybe the crazy black Hebrew Israelites had gone into the hospitality industry after realizing there was no profit in broadswords.

  I went into the lobby to get keys for a room then waited on a bench across from a pair of old women. I had never seen such love as theirs. They held hands absently, but firm; one set of fingers like kudzu, the other like dirt. It was the kind of friendship earned after forty years. I doubted they were renting a room; the motel clerk was letting them rest some warmth back into their bodies. If they had shelter I wouldn’t know it; how they made money I can’t surmise.

  After ten minutes our quartet had, involuntarily, synchronized our breathing. A tiny gasp around the room and then a silence deeper than the fields of space.

  The first woman wore sandals even though it was October 21st. Her toes were exposed. Her heels were calloused into stiff yellowed skin that I wanted to caress between my thumbs.

  I missed women very much.

  I was wearing a dark green suit that was ugly, but I got good service at the store. It was fitting that I wore it to see Lorraine again since I’d been on my way to buy it when I met her. The Egyptian guy who owned the place in midtown Manhattan even recognized me when I visited. He came from behind the counter screaming, Big Man! I have the jacket for you! You know famous rapper Mr. Notorious B.I.G.? I make you look as good as that.

  The suits were worn at home and at work. I’d started moving furniture a week ago.

  I stood and smoothed my clothes the best that I could when an old Cadillac arrived; it had commercial license plates and darkened gypsy cab windows. My hands were shaking.

  Out stepped Lorraine. She paid the driver a twenty.

  As I led Lorraine to our room I felt the pulse of nature on the stairs. My arms and legs trembled so much I thought they were going to tear.

  The room had a double bed and that’s it. Not even a night table. The telephone was on the floor. There was space for a dresser or chiffonier, but those starving animals had been sold off by the farmer. I would have made a joke about the decor, but was too afraid that Lorriane only needed one excuse to leave.

  – I’m glad to know that, Lorraine said.

  I had that feeling again, of my mind being read.

  – Your smile, she clarified. I’m glad to know you can smile.

  She was nervous. She was.

  If I sound surprised that’s because I was surprised. To me women were like the perfect model of government: paving the roads and protecting the weak. Omnipotent.

  Boys without fathers say that kind of thing a lot. About their mothers. About their wives. Comparing ladies to goddesses and gold. But still I think we hate women even more than the average guy.

  My hands were on her shoulders. I reminded myself that we weren’t in love. Be fun, I told myself. Don’t get weird. She only wants to play.

  A man walked across the second floor landing right outside our room. The curtains were drawn so I only heard his boots on the concrete in drowsy cadence. He stopped by our door.

  Lorraine wasn’t listening, but I was.

  She touched my neck to tell me that we could kiss, but I wanted to hear the man outside go mosey off. I tried to think of some excuse for checking the door, but didn’t want to look like the cheating husband afraid that he was being followed. Or worse, a nut.

  Lorraine made my skin tin again. When she squeezed warm hands around my cheeks they curved and shaped easily. I wanted to enjoy it, but hardly could because the outline of a man was still visible through the window when our curtains shifted.

  Don’t think I’m being too spectral here, I wasn’t afraid that the guy was a ghost; it was a push-in robbery that worried me.

  –There’s some things I’ve got to take care of anyway, Lorraine said, then dropped her bookbag on the floor.

  I was agitated by the guy standing outside then by the fact that my hesitation had curdled our mood. – Why don’t you forget about that? I suggested. What is that?

  – My books, she said. I have to write a paper.

  Insulted, I went to the bathroom. Who brings homework to a rendezvous?

  Of course, geek that I am, outrage gave way to a fantasy of she and I doing naked research on the bed. How erotic it would be to write up the bibliography with her bare thighs pressed against my back. Then when I walked out again Lorraine was packing.

  – We have to move, she said.

  – What the hell are you talking about?

  –There’s no working phone and I need one.

  Lorraine had unscrewed the mouthpiece from the handset to find that inside it someone had lumped ten or twelve pieces of gum.

  – What do you want the phone for? I can help you.

  – Please, she scoffed.

  I got angry that she didn’t want my sexy research assistance. – You know these rooms are usually hourly, I said.

  – It took you almost an hour just get up those stairs.

  I sat on the bed and stifled any cracks about her own fat back because Lorraine seemed an insult away from running home.

  – It’s not so hard. You go down and tell them the room’s not how you want it.

  I was so annoyed that I forgot about the spook by my door until I was out there with little of Lorraine to protect me. But I did still have the perfect clean smell of the woman, which seemed to be enough because the man out there had gone.

  This new room was like the other one except that we had a nightstand which Lorraine used as a desk. While she chatted with class-mates on the working phone I sat on the floor, horseshit insane for pussy.

  When another half hour passed I walked over to see that she was writing her essay in bubble letter handwriting, like a junior-high-school girl. Plus the book she used for reference was wrong, mostly becaus
e she used only one. Lorraine was writing, in part, about Lee Iacocca’s relationship with Henry Ford II and what caused Iacocca to finally leave Ford. But she used only Iacocca’s autobiography for the facts!

  When I get bored my favorite pastime is to catalogue the stupidity of others.

  – I thought you were supposed to hang up a jacket so it wouldn’t wrinkle, she said just then.

  – Uh, this is wrinkle-proof.

  – Nothing natural is wrinkle-proof.

  She laughed, but I wondered why she had to be so shitty. Maybe she’d seen me sneering at her two-inch-wide margins. I felt my face warming and didn’t want the ridicule. If we’d been having sex already this wouldn’t come up.

  My mother might think a diet was going to save me and Grandma feel the same about hard work, but what I truly needed was to release this hydroelectric dam–sized nut then the lesser problems like debilitating psychiatric disorders could be swiftly fixed.

  But my outburst only made Lorraine less horny, imagine that. Instead of shredding off her underthings she asked me some questions that I didn’t understand.

  – Do you think Ahmed Abdel deserves another trial? she repeated.

  I shrugged, I stalled, I had no idea who this guy was but wanted to sound well informed. Maybe he was a singer who’d killed his wife while on drugs. William Burroughs never went to jail, so why should this guy?

  –That’s not what happened at all, she yelled. What do you do with your time?

  Lorraine drained a pamphlet from her bookbag. His name was Ahmed Abdel and he’d gone to jail for exploding a police car while two cops sat inside. He swore he hadn’t been involved. That he was a journalist, not a jingoist. This was on the first page of the pamphlet.

  – My friends are making time for his campaign. What about you?

  I didn’t like her tone; it sounded like a dare. – I’m afraid I’d get lost in the crowd.

  – You are the crowd, she said.

  I think my hesitation rubbed her rawest parts. She was in college, a time of optimistic fascism when it seems that all the world needs is one more rally.

  – I’m not sure we’d ever be good friends, I told her.