by Sloane Tanen
“And you are seventy, Mother. A resident of the same drug-rehab center. Perhaps you had more in common than you thought.”
“I just thought you’d be interested about Martin,” she said. “Forget I said anything.”
“I’ll do my best. I’ve got other things to worry about at the moment.”
“Oh yes, the surgery,” she said. Her face went stiff with gravitas.
He bit his lip in an attempt not to laugh at her go at sincerity. “You’re no good at empathy.”
“I’m good at everything I do. Even sobriety. I don’t even miss booze. This is all an exercise in futility. I’m not an alcoholic. I’m just good at drinking.”
“You’ll be here, though?” he asked, realizing that he actually wanted his mother in town for the operation. Even if she was locked up in a gilded cage in Malibu, her proximity, for the first time in as long as he could remember, was a comfort.
“Of course I’ll be here,” she said. “I’m having a fabulous time.” She reached for Henry’s arm with a conspiratorial grin. “I’m going to ask Martin to have dinner with me tonight, if I can find him. It’s his birthday. I remembered that!” She tapped her forehead. “I still have an excellent memory. You should have seen his face, Henry.”
“I’m glad you’re making the most of your time here, Mum.”
“Thank you, darling. I am.”
Henry went to the YMCA in Santa Monica after his visit with Bunny. He’d gone after their last couple of visits, needing to burn off energy. Dr. Zimmerman had strongly advised him against swimming, but Dr. Zimmerman wasn’t spending every other day in family therapy with his mother. The Y was on his way home from Malibu, and the pool was clean and nearly empty in the evenings.
He dived into the heavily chlorinated water and tried to keep up with the other swimmers, a few elderly people, all doing laps at an impressive pace. How he loved the silence and weightlessness underwater. He’d stopped for a rest when he noticed a woman in a navy swimsuit and a red swim cap standing at the edge of the pool. He decided to get out, not wanting to share his lane. He swam to the stairs.
“Don’t get out on my account,” she said.
“I was finished anyway,” he said, pulling himself up on the railing and removing his goggles. He didn’t welcome the cold air any more than the unwanted conversation.
“Henry Holter?” she asked, looking him up and down. He pushed his chest out a bit. Henry had been told he had a young man’s body. He took a childish pride in that fact, if for no other reason than that he did so little to maintain it.
“Yes?” He took off his cap and removed his earplugs. He didn’t recognize the woman without his glasses on but there was something pleasing about the blurred view of her. That she didn’t remove her cap was a testament to her lack of vanity.
“I’m Janine,” she said, lowering her body into the pool. “We met at Directions.”
“Ah!” Henry said, genuinely surprised. “I don’t think I ever caught your name. Didn’t recognize you without my glasses and with you wearing that cap.”
“You look as if you’re feeling better.”
“Ah, well. Perhaps I’ve been empowered by the Q-TIP technique.”
Janine appeared confused.
“‘Quit taking it personally,’” he clarified, wondering that Janine wasn’t familiar with the Directions vernacular. In a typical display of sanctimonious theatrics, Mitchell had introduced the concept after handing both Henry and his mother their very own Q-tips. Henry laughed at the memory. “I find there’s nothing like a catchy acronym and a symbolic cotton swab to set forty years of familial dysfunction right.”
She grinned and Henry felt his stomach tighten as if he suddenly had something at stake. “So, you swim here?” he asked idiotically. He was distracted by her eyes, which were expressive and, like her smile, a little hard to read.
“I used to swim here when I was a girl. And then I stopped.”
“Why’s that?”
“My mom died.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be. It’s not your fault.”
“No,” he said. “Hard to know what to say is all.”
She put on her goggles, adjusted them, then disappeared into the pool. He felt a sense of urgency. His heart was racing. He stood at the edge of the water, staring in like an ass. She broke the surface with a beatific expression, any sorrow seemingly washed away. She laughed when she saw him, maybe finding it funny that he was still standing there.
He sat down where he’d been standing and let his feet dangle in the pool. “It’s really a coincidence seeing you here, you know, after Directions. Do you mind if I join you?” he asked, noticing that four of the five swimmers had cleared off. “I don’t want to interrupt.”
“Not at all,” she said. “But I thought you were done.”
“I was.”
She smiled and pushed off to the center of the pool. He reinserted his earplugs. He couldn’t see her but he knew she was down there, somewhere under the water, like a lost pearl.
Janine
“Would you like to have dinner?” Henry asked. They’d gotten out of the pool. He was leaning against a railing on the broad deck space as he dried off his feet. His movements were youthful and self-assured. The halogen lights cast a warm glow over his surprisingly slender body. Janine thought he looked better half naked than he did clothed. That wasn’t true of most grown men, she thought, remembering her old boyfriend Jürgen and his slight potbelly. When she’d first seen Henry at Directions, his wrinkled khakis and button-down shirt had given him a dated, Indiana Jones look. She would never have guessed that Han Solo was underneath all that fabric.
“Dinner?” Janine asked. She looked from her pruned fingers to the clock. “It’s late. We’ve been swimming for almost an hour.”
“A snack, then?” He threw her a towel.
“With you?”
“I suppose you could have it alone but that would have made my question rhetorical and I loathe rhetorical questions.”
“Mm.”
“That’s all right,” Henry said, looking a little embarrassed. “Why don’t we get changed and let me at least walk you to your car.”
“Oh,” Janine said. She wished she hadn’t dismissed the invitation so quickly. She was starving and she liked the way they had been swimming together without talking. Moving quietly side by side in the water, fully aware of each other’s presence but careful not to disrupt the other’s solitude, had been an oddly intimate experience.
“I am hungry,” she said. “But I don’t—”
“—want to have some inane first-date conversation at nine o’clock at night?”
“Something like that.”
A few teenagers came out of the locker room and dived recklessly into the pool.
“That’s my exit cue,” Henry said. “Youth in swim attire.”
“You don’t like young people?” she asked.
“No.” His answer was so blunt and unapologetic, it was funny. “I do not like them here or there, I do not like them anywhere.”
Janine laughed. Was he serious?
“Anyway, maybe think about dinner while you change?” He began toweling off his hair. He had great hair. It was thick and a little too long without looking intentionally forgotten. “How about we don’t even discuss our parents? We can talk about swimming, music, art, whatever you like.”
“Sounds very good,” she said. “Can we talk about that Leshan Buddha reproduction at Directions? There’s something about a massive naked man in a dining room I find unappetizing.”
“Ha!” He jerked his head three or four times to the left to release water from his ear. “Agreed.”
“Hai Tong must be spinning in his grave,” she said, all too aware of her pathetic attempt to impress him. Maybe it was just the accent, but Henry seemed really smart. It was show-offy, but what was the point of her self-education if she couldn’t use her knowledge while flirting? And God, how long had it been since
she’d flirted with anyone anyway?
“Have you been to China?” he asked.
“No. I just like big things.” She smiled, pleased with herself. “And I like art. Since I can’t buy art, I buy big art books.”
“I’m an art historian!” Henry said, smiling too broadly. “I write big art books.”
“You’re a professor?” She felt a cramp in her pelvis. Janine had an irrational adulation for academics. It was something she probably would have outgrown had she gone to college, but she hadn’t, and the very idea made her giddy with desire. “Seems like an odd vocation for someone who hates young people.”
“I don’t hate them,” he said. “I just don’t like being around them.”
“Oh. Okay, then.”
“Liking my students isn’t a prerequisite for the job. Office hours are a bloody circus. The personal problems, the whinging that goes on. I honestly don’t understand how the lines got so dreadfully blurry. You should hear the nonsense I’m forced to endure.”
“Well, don’t get touchy.”
“I’m not getting touchy,” he said, though he clearly was. “Last month I had a PhD candidate—PhD—wanting to discuss various aspects of his father’s extramarital affairs! I have a first-year graduate student, Kate something or other, who came to me last week with the idea of writing a paper on the homosexual undertones in the Hudson River School paintings. She was serious too. Thought she was being quite clever.”
“That’s not a personal problem,” Janine said, defending Kate. “It’s valid.”
“Valid? They’re landscapes!” he almost yelled. “I’m not saying some of the painters weren’t homosexual, but what difference does that make?” He looked at Janine. “Those paintings were intended as a celebration of nature, of God in nature. It’s not contemporary art,” he said with a trace of disdain. “How the artists got their jollies is entirely irrelevant. To suggest that a tree is anything but a tree is like saying…”
“That Georgia O’Keeffe’s flowers are vaginas?”
“That’s different. And if I tell Kate how ludicrously specious her argument is, I’ll have Harriet Hooper and the Gender Studies Department on my ass. And if there is one department to avoid at all costs, it’s Gender Studies.”
Somewhere, not so deep down, Janine knew Henry’s rant was a titanic red flag. Still, there was something about his lack of conformity to the rules of political correctness that she found refreshing. She was sure Harriet Hooper hated him.
“Do you collect?” Janine asked, hoping to change the subject. “Art?”
“A bit.” He relaxed his shoulders, looking self-conscious about his outburst. “If you like Chinese, I have a nice collection of ceramics and bronzes from the Han and Wei dynasties. Would you like to have a look?”
“That’s quite a line.”
“You rejected my dinner offer. Can’t blame a chap for trying.”
“So you’re showing off?” she asked, flattered.
“I don’t get many opportunities. My last girlfriend thought contrapposto was an Italian wine.”
Janine laughed at that, feeling herself blush. She liked that he was peacocking for her, liked that she was being singled out for being smart, that she was being singled out for anything, really, other than having been Jenny Bailey.
“Not that she’s unintelligent by any stretch,” he went on. “But she is an English teacher. Academics aren’t polymaths. They tend to specialize fanatically.”
“What’s your area?”
“American art of the nineteenth century. Not very sexy, I know.”
“Unless all those boulders really are giant testicles or breasts.”
“There is that,” he said.
“Oh, wait! I know you. H. Holter? I have your book!” Janine said with an excited familiarity. “There was a show at the Met.”
“The National Gallery.”
She could see his face redden despite the poor lighting. It was like watching a glass of wine being filled. “But of course,” she said in a mock British accent. “Very foolish of me.”
“And what about you?” he asked, embarrassed. “What do you do? You’re some kind of an actress, right?”
Janine looked at him, surprised. How did he know that?
“That fellow from Directions the other day,” he explained. “He seemed to have been quite a fan of yours.”
“Oh.” Janine cringed at the memory. “No. Well, I was, but that was a long time ago. When I was a kid. I don’t really do anything right now,” she said, hating how lame she sounded. “I live in New York. I’m just visiting. I’m just here to help my dad.”
“Well, I hope you won’t be going back too soon?”
“I’m not sure. I’m not in a rush. I’m trying to be useful.”
He didn’t say anything for a minute. “And is that what you want?” he asked with unexpected seriousness. “To be useful?”
Janine nodded, afraid to speak. She was humiliated by her emotion. Was that all she wanted? A useful life? Her eyes started to sting.
Henry looked stricken. His mouth was a little open, forehead wrinkled as if he were in agony. “Oh God. Did I say something wrong?”
Janine shook her head. Then she buried her face in her towel and wiped her eyes, pretending to dry her hair.
“I don’t believe you,” he said. “I’m afraid you’ll have to prove it by coming over. No funny business,” he added, crossing his heart. “I can make panini con palle di nonno and barba di frate. Which translates to ‘sandwiches with grandpa’s balls and friar’s beard,’ but I promise it’s just salami and greens.”
Janine laughed again, impressed that he seemed to speak Italian and relieved he wasn’t taking her emotional fragility too seriously. And his dopey humor kept surprising her. “Where do you live?” she asked.
“Laurel Canyon.”
She stopped laughing. “That’s a long way to go for a snack.”
“I’m a very good cook.”
“You can’t be that good.”
“I’ll drive you and bring you back.”
“In little pieces?” she asked, remembering how funny Ted Bundy was supposed to have been and still wondering about the word on his car bumper. “You have the word creep written on the back bumper of your car. I assume you didn’t put it there?” Janine didn’t want to bring it up but it did sort of require an explanation. Certainly before she went to his house.
“I promise you I’m not a serial killer,” he said as if reading her thoughts.
“Who said serial? It only takes one.”
“Drive your own car,” he suggested. “But come. Despite all my clumsiness, I’m feeling unusually chipper.”
Janine opened her mouth to say something witty when Henry Holter put his finger to her lips. She was struck by the confidence of the gesture, by the smell of his chlorinated hand.
“I was just going to ask if there would be wine,” she said, trying to breathe evenly.
“I’ve got a Chenin Blanc and an Umbrian red from Torgiano.”
It was as unlike her to be impulsive as it was for her to go into a locker room—she had a horror of being recognized while naked. She’d planned to just put her clothes on over her suit. The last time she’d trusted a stranger, she’d wound up with her pictures splattered all over TMZ. She knew she was going to sleep with Henry. The certainty was liberating. She didn’t feel embarrassed or apologetic.
“I’ll see you in ten?” Henry said as he held the door of the women’s locker room open for her. “I can promise it will be the best meal you had since yesterday.”
“You’re funny,” she said, turning to go inside and shower off.
“Nobody else thinks so.”
“Maybe they just don’t get your jokes.”
“That’s what I’ve always thought.”
Bunny
After an exhaustive search, Bunny finally located Martin, chuckling to himself as he read Pride and Prejudice on the lawn. “They took away my books,” he offered by
way of explanation, “but it’s damn good.” He shook the Austen. “Damn good. I’d forgotten.” She pressed him to join her for dinner that night. She was very curious about what he’d been doing (other than drugs) for the past four decades. He seemed spectacularly uninterested in having dinner with her, no doubt still shocked by her unexpected appearance, but once she’d pointed out that it was his birthday and that he obviously had nothing better to do (Directions didn’t allow family meals Monday through Thursday), he reluctantly agreed.
Now that they were entering the dining room, Bunny was excited. She thought Martin looked happy, or at least amused.
“This is lovely,” Bunny said, waiting for Martin to pull out her chair at the dinner table. When he did, she sat down. The dining room was nearly empty. They had agreed to eat late, after the addicts had gone to bed, all of them too bored to face another evening without drugs or alcohol. “Who would have thought we’d be dining together after all these years?”
“In our pajamas, no less,” Martin said.
“These are not pajamas,” Bunny said, pulling at her oversize, overpriced silk pants.
“Do they have an elastic waist?” he asked.
“That is none of your business.”
“Relax.” Martin laughed. He pushed out his chair to show her his white sneakers. “I didn’t exactly pack for dinners à deux either.”
“My maid packed for a cruise around Spitsbergen.” Bunny’s lips stiffened as she thought of Bettina.
“The help these days.” Martin’s voice dripped with sarcasm. He shook his head and rapped his knuckles on the table twice in a gesture that took Bunny back almost half a century.
“Don’t be a bore, Martin,” she said. She raised her glass of water. “Happy birthday. To getting old.”
“Beats being dead,” he said, clinking her glass as the waiter delivered the menus. “I think.”
“It’s shocking, isn’t it?” she asked. “How quickly it goes?”