I had put Nonna’s notebooks in my bedside drawer. I had been too busy with the fire of my torch, the heat of summer, and the passion I was experiencing with Travis.
And that was the order of it. I spent my mornings hammering metal. My biceps strained into humps that over the decade had become the envy of the gym crowd. By afternoon, the heat of the day drugged me with its call for laziness. Sometimes I would succumb to it as if it were a primitive beating drum—primal, old, instinctive rhythms. Repetition lulled my days and my nights. I could no longer donate my hours to unstructured activities like random cleaning or idle reading.
I thought back to the night of the play. Travis and I never really watched the actors onstage. We were content to lie on the blanket, away from the crowd, and listen to insects and Shakespeare in his iambic pentameter. Her whip, of cricket’s bone; the lash, of film. Then water sounds. A heartbeat or a growl.
We lay together and tried to breathe with the words and the night and each other. I forgot about the grandmothers with the man-song drowning out more cyclical hymns.
How could I convey all of these impulses into my artist statement? Forget the paper; I wanted to put fresh meat on the slab of granite between the carefully arranged knife and dinner fork. And I wanted to leave it there to decay over the weeks my work would be on display. My art was passing, and in passing, it was becoming. From meat and man, iambic. Yeah, I am.
♦ 43 ♦
“DON’T BE WORRIED if he acts a little distant his first days home,” Karen said. She was rolling blue paint next to the door. “My stepson holed himself up in his room for the first three days of our visitation.”
“I didn’t know that Shelly had a son,” I said, amazed that she hadn’t mentioned this before.
“Not Shelly, my first husband.”
“Oh.” Shit.
It had been Karen’s idea to revamp my old bedroom for Sam’s homecoming. Together we had stripped the flowered wallpaper and primed the walls. I had selected Sam’s favorite blue crayon and taken it to the local hardware store to get a custom paint match. Then I picked two more shadowy shades to paint a silhouetted mural of spaceships, planets, stars, and comets. As the last detail, I used highlights of phosphorescent paint to outline the stars and paint lights on the spaceships.
“This room is going to make one little boy very happy,” Karen said as she inspected the phantom images that were blooming from my brush.
“Yeah, I think he is going to like it. It’ll look good once I move his furniture in here.”
“I could get you some business doing murals if you are interested.”
I sighed. “No, this is once and done. But thanks.”
I was still nervous about the coming weekend. Bryce was personally driving Sam to my doorstep. He asked to stay until Sunday so he could rest before he repeated the ten-hour trip. That request had been made five weeks ago when I had dropped Sam off in Michigan. Naturally I had agreed to the suggestion. Bryce was still the father of my child. He would want to see where his son would be living, iron out details about insurance, among other things.
The last few days had been difficult with Travis. Expectancy was in the air between us. I wanted to talk to him, but I didn’t know the words to say what I felt. I enjoyed being the things I was with him—lover, tease, and vamp—but I couldn’t align those characters with my other roles of mother and disappointed ex-wife, which I needed to be while Bryce was there.
Later that evening, after I had scraped flecks of blue paint from my forearms, Travis drove me to the opening of the alumni show in Philadelphia. It was our first official function together. Travis dressed in a smart, collarless black shirt. He wore chinos and dark penny loafers. His forehead, out from under his hat, glistened with clean perspiration. I had never seen him dressed up before. When I kissed him in greeting, he tasted like a good memory, but not any memory that I had of him. His cologne seemed familiar, but not because of Travis. He was different.
With the summer air streaming around us and with the unrestrained volume of the radio, we drove without conversation.
The traffic was sluggish on the Schuylkill Expressway and slower still in the slender lanes of the city streets, but we were lucky in finding a good parking spot.
We had just entered the lobby of the building when Greg found us both and insisted on leading me away by the arm.
“I just want to introduce Bobbi to a visiting fabric artist who is here from Turkey.”
“Oh, um, Greg. This is Travis,” I said belatedly as we were walking away. I had not given any forethought about how I would introduce Travis. To call him my boyfriend seemed silly. The title of boyfriend was simultaneously an exaggeration and understatement—not to mention a bit bold, considering I was still legally married.
Greg signaled for Travis to follow us, but Travis just waved us away with a casual motion of his hand. I knew he would be fine on his own. He stood talking to the head of the chemistry department whose wife happened to be the exhibit curator. I sent Travis an apologetic glance from across the room, and he rebounded with a look of amusement. Of course, Travis would fare well with academic types.
I watched Travis all evening. He was at ease in the gallery even though the art that surrounded him was edgy and unsure. His stance projected patient authority as he talked to artists and professors, questioning them about their work, nodding when appropriate. Maybe that’s what I loved about him. He could stand still and be himself when all else (the art, the artists—me) was trying to rebel. Nobody had ever exhibited that kind of patience with me before. I realized over the course of the evening that it was because Travis was a true independent spirit, a man who was at home with himself. He was so comfortable with his life choices that he could naturally allow others to come to their own conclusions at their own pace. With kudos unsaid, I found it was I who was dragging my date from the room. I could no longer stand still with elements of my past when my future was demanding attention.
“Come on, cowboy, let’s ride.”
“Cowboy?”
The ride home was quieter than our ride into the city. We listened to the college jazz station and turned the radio off when the music started to fuzz. We exchanged the straightaways of the express lanes for the curves of the country roads. Travis slowed the car at the dangerous turns, those marked by animal carcasses. Funny, how they were always present, with a warning in their decay.
“Are you cold?” Travis asked. “I can close the sunroof.”
“No, I’m fine.”
Travis reached for my hand. It was clammy.
“What’s wrong?”
“Nothing.” I didn’t part with my emotions readily, as Travis was well aware. He typically scrutinized my every facial expression to gain insight as to my feelings. I kept my face impassive to keep him from reading my mind, though I didn’t know why. My brain was currently measuring data, trying to find balance.
My control proved ineffective.
“I can tell you are thinking about something. Is it the show?” he asked.
“No. I’m not thinking about work. I think the show went really well, don’t you?” I didn’t wait for an answer. “I got some excellent contacts I can use when I move my business here.”
“The show was great. But if you weren’t thinking about the show, what are you thinking about?”
There was a silence before I spoke. “Us, I guess.”
Travis winced and waited for me to continue.
“I’m so happy,” I said finally.
“And that’s a problem—why?”
“I don’t want it to end.”
“What do you mean end? This wasn’t just a summer fling to—?”
“I don’t mean end as in the end. I just meant end of an era.”
“It doesn’t have to be the end of an era.”
Travis kept his eyes on the road. I sensed he didn’t want to read my facial cues.
“Of course not, but things will change. Sam is coming home. We can’t just roa
m naked around my house anymore—”
“I own a robe.”
“—or drop everything and drive an hour to those foreign films you love. Did you say a robe?” I realized what he had implied. “We are not going to be doing the sleepover thing. I can’t. I’m going to need a little space for the next couple of days. I’m a mother first. I can’t explain this whole thing to Sam. Not yet. We need to slow this down a little.”
I didn’t elucidate further. Telling Travis that Bryce would be spending three days with me was a risk. Travis was an understanding man, but I didn’t want to test his limits. I had communicated my need for space; he would respect the distance I was putting between us.
Travis was silent the rest of the trip. When he pulled the car to the curb on Mulberry Street, I invited him to come inside. I knew he would not turn me down, but I also understood the complexity in his acceptance.
♦ 44 ♦
IN THE EARLY MORNING, I listened from the bedroom window as Travis filled Jules’s bowl on the patio below. I had pretended to be asleep when he left the bed. He leaned over and kissed me on his way to the bathroom. The sun rose into a depressingly clear sky, and he had no excuses not to attend to his landscaping customers. I would not have given him any excuses, anyway. What was the use? I could not stop the lark from singing. I knew Travis felt it, too.
The night before, our lovemaking had been disappointing. We went through the motions but without satiation, and we fell asleep with more need than ever. And I could not discern if I was the source or the result of all that neediness. We had tried again, later, to quell the frenzy, but ultimately, sleep rescued us, offering only a restless trance as a poor alternative to our gratification.
Downstairs, the screen door whined and snapped shut. Jules was back inside, but I wondered on which side of the door Travis stood. I didn’t have to wait long for my answer—I heard the truck engine. I sighed, uncertain if I did so in relief or in disappointment.
I got out of bed and stretched. No need to look out the window; Travis was gone. I rustled the bedcovers, presumably to straighten them, but the reality was that I was searching for something Travis may have left behind for me. When my search revealed nothing, I threw the bedding in a pile and scanned the floor for anything, a small sign to make me feel less alone. My gaze locked on something wedged between my nightstand and the wall, and I bent to investigate. Nonna’s notebooks. They must have fallen when Shelly and Travis helped me move the furniture into the back bedroom. I picked up the notebooks without hesitation. Here was my sign. Nonna had something to tell me, and desperate for anything to fill the abyss, I could no longer escape from Nonna’s words.
I dressed and made myself a thermos of hot, sweet coffee. With the notebooks tucked under my arm, I walked to the lake. I had spent few if any mornings by the water, and as I slipped so comfortably into the pocket of dawn by the shore, I found it curious that I hadn’t. The water lapped at my toes with more sound than it did during the hectic days, and I could hear my own heartbeat as it studded my chest. In the light blue of the morning, I could still make out the pale outline of the moon, and I could feel its pull on the lake and all the fluids in my own body.
I had always considered myself to be born under the sign of the moon rather than the sign of Cancer. Everybody had looked to the moon on the day I was born, so it seemed to govern me in a way that the constellation of the crab could not. Who wanted to be under Cancer’s domain, anyway? It sounded like a curse. I didn’t know any other Cancers with whom I compared, so when asked, I told the zodiacally curious that I was born under the sign of the moon.
With the watching moon and the prostrating lake in attendance, I poured myself a bowl of coffee and opened the last of Nonna’s notebooks.
May 15, 1991
I cannot tell you how wonderful it felt to have Charlie home. Wearing my red dress, I greeted him at the door. Mama and Daddy left us alone for the evening. We wasted no time in finding my bedroom on the second floor of the tiny row home. In our passionate, tumbling reunion, drive replaced reverence, and I reenacted the love play of my youth. If my husband was surprised at my assertiveness, he said nothing. We didn’t waste words or actions during his short leave.
It was with heavy heart and still-heavy loins that we left my small bed to dress for Lena’s birthday party. I touched my abdomen as I tied the sash of my dress and imagined those clairvoyant Greek grandmothers nodding their heads. I felt the power of their vision with the truth of my womb. Some women knew. Charlie embraced me from behind. He let his hands slope below my waist. I would like to believe he had the gift of second sight as well.
In the two months I had come to know Lena, I had never been inside her home. She lived with her stepfather and mother, Rev. and Mrs. Ernest S. Platz, in a brownstone just two streets away. I cannot say I was even curious about her life. I was too absorbed in my own plight.
Lena’s reality engaged me in a series of shocks, the first of which came when Mrs. Platz answered the door. She was petite and dark like Lena, but her stomach swelled over her legs like a hot air balloon over a basket. I estimated that the baby she carried would be born within the month. Lena, who had no siblings, had never talked of her mother’s condition. It was a condition that was about to change, and soon.
Mrs. Platz led us down a hall to the dining room where the Reverend, Lena, and Hank sat drinking sherry. The Reverend stood to greet us. An inch taller than Charlie, he had a booming voice that had a slippery edge to it, more salesman than preacher. Then again, I supposed him to be God’s salesman.
Lena’s mother did not join us. I rose to help her in the kitchen, but Rev. Platz urged me to sit. Then he elbowed Charlie and said, “Your pretty little wife needs to conserve her energy for other things. You boys are only home a week.”
It took me a second to complete the innuendo. I did not expect such talk from an American minister, but that was mild compared to the conversation to come. I felt as though I was in a reality perpendicular to our own, where people were the opposite of expectation and events were curiously jumbled.
I did not take notice of Hank at first, and when I did, the eerie pale of his blue eyes unsettled me. He sat quietly with a proprietary arm on the back of Lena’s chair. I would soon understand why. Every time Mrs. Platz left the room, which was often, the Reverend, a little more intoxicated with each exit, would lean over to Hank and say something crude about his stepdaughter. He would remark on her high bosom, her compact buttocks, and the glorious pleasure that Hank could expect from such a “tight, little package.” Hank’s eyes remained expressionless.
When Mrs. Platz rejoined the party, her husband repeatedly bragged of his role in her present condition.
“Is this your first child?” Charlie asked, trying to turn the conversation.
“That we know of.” The Reverend’s laugh was loud.
Mrs. Platz disregarded her husband’s lewd behavior.
“Shall we turn out the lights? I am bringing the cake now. I hope everybody likes chocolate.”
In darkness we sang “Happy Birthday” to Lena, and when she blew out her candles, we all thought that the Reverend Ernie Platz might evaporate into the fulfillment of her wish. He did not, and Charlie thanked our hostess in a speedy exit speech. We were excused with a wink and a knowing command to “Go enjoy yourselves.” We couldn’t get away fast enough.
“Have you ever seen anything like that?” I asked Charlie once we were down the block.
“I wish I could say she was moving up in the world.”
“You don’t like Hank?”
“He’s nice enough. Let’s just say he will be receiving some letters from Virginia when we are overseas.”
“Other girls? That’s terrible. Are you sure? Because if you are, I can’t let my friend marry such a man.”
“What are you going to do? She’ll end up marrying him anyway, and hating you.”
I thought of Lena, wanting to please, wanting to be beautiful. It broke my heart, but I
knew that Charlie was right. I hugged him close with a sureness that I had married well.
May 16, 1991
I didn’t have a thing to do with it, but the wedding was off. The note came by messenger to our bakery. I immediately ran to the Platz residence. A sober Rev. Platz answered the door.
“You can talk some sense into her,” he said, pulling me through the door. “She is up in her room.”
His voiced trailed me up the steps. “And you can tell her that if she thinks I will support her, she has another thing coming.”
Lena’s door was open, and she was busy writing announcements and notes for returned gifts. The woman before me was efficient and steely, where before she had been thoughtful and endearing. Again this house was muddling my expectations.
“Don’t worry about me. I am fine. It’s a mutual decision, really,” she said before I asked her a question.
“It’s just as well,” I replied. Had she found out about the other women? I could not ask. “I will miss my support line. Who will follow news of Charlie’s squadron with me?”
“Oh, Anja. You will be all right. You never needed me. Charlie will come home to you. He will build a fine house for you and your five children.”
That is how we left it. Not only did Lena sever her relationship with Hank, but she ended our friendship as well. She no longer needed my reassurance, and she would not accept my pity. When I closed the door to her bedroom, I heard her wedding gown swish on its hanger on the other side.
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