Always Chloe and Other Stories

by Catherine Ryan Hyde

  She presses a cotton ball on the site and withdraws the needle. I hold the cotton in place with my elbow tightly bent as she processes my anonymity. Then she takes out a Band-Aid and peels back the papers. But now wait, because this is significant. I can’t just skip over this part. This is not a plain flesh-colored Band-Aid. It’s cheery pink with Disney characters printed on it. Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. She presses it across the cotton ball, and I stare at it for a moment. I have no idea what to say. She hands me a receipt and tells me I have to bring it with me when I come back for the results. Then she tells me I have to wait two weeks. Minimum. But I forgive her. Because of Snow White.

  Web has this way of hanging in a doorway like a condor shooting thermals. No, wait, forget I said that. A dramatic animal metaphor for an attractive man always comes off sounding too much like The Bridges of Madison County. And Web is no Robert Kincaid. Then again, neither is anybody else. That’s the problem.

  Still, he has this way. He stands with one shoulder leaned on the door frame, and I can physically observe the momentum that pushes him in, but he remains frozen. Staring at me. I still have to say it reminds me of a bird. Maybe a seagull on a fiercely windy day, trying to fly into the wind and just hanging there, wearing itself out. But perhaps a pelican or a crow would have a less Robert James Waller-like ring, and these things are important to me.

  I think this only works in bedroom doorways, but I can’t say for a fact. Who would bother to try it anywhere else?

  Sandoval is lying on the bed with me, as always; one of my hands rests on his back, denying him permission to solve things his own way. He forms a wall of excuse to hold Web aloft.

  Web says, “I missed you.”

  I say, “Oh, come on, Web. If you’re going to throw me a bone, you’ll have to do better than that.” I say this to hurt him; his sincerity is evident.

  “You should know me better.”

  “Everything I believe about you is based on something I know for a fact.” I leave him wondering what that means for a moment. It did have a wonderfully cryptic sound. It’s also true.

  Here’s something else I know for a fact: Until lately, Web never showed up here uninvited. He does not surprise me with visits. I invite him, practically beg him to come. He might make good on one invitation in ten. Now, after two weeks of doing nothing, asking nothing, inviting nothing, here he is. I am not a stupid woman. I have stumbled onto the path to Web’s heart, and I am not above using that toward my own ends. He would do the same to me.

  “Lilly. I wouldn’t say it if I didn’t mean it. I’ve missed you terribly.”

  In the ensuing pause, I think, It’s not something I’d expect you to do well.

  “Can I come in?”

  “I don’t know, can you?” I take my hand off Sandoval’s back, freeing him to his own conscience. He growls convincingly.

  “Please, Lilly.”

  His hair is doing that thing again. He hasn’t shaved all that recently; it makes him appear distressed, like he can’t eat or sleep until we work this out. It’s dark, his beard. The outline of it is always visible, even when he’s freshly shaven. And his eyebrows are dark, a long, hard line across his brow, with dark eyes set bizarrely deep behind them, behind all that salt-and-pepper hair. I’ve never made a trip from that brow to those eyes without feeling as though I’d fallen off a cliff.

  “Sandoval,” I say. “Go downstairs.”

  He turns his face to me in scorched disbelief.

  “You heard me.”

  He slinks off the bed, lands on the carpet in a crouch, suddenly no taller than a Dalmatian.

  Web presses his back against the wall to afford him ample room to pass.

  Sandoval shoots me a wounded look before slinking downstairs. In the midst of genuine guilt, I picture myself phoning the decorator for a third white leather sofa.

  Web lies beside me on the bed. He leaves room to place a ruler between our hips; we both address the ceiling. It hits me that my perception of myself as the wronged party is validated. He admits with every gesture that he is at fault. And he is not the kind of man to admit such things. At least, he never was before.

  I become heady with my own sudden power. I say, “Talk.”

  While I’m waiting, I notice the bruise on the inside of my left elbow. The dark spot that marks a vein reformed of its tendency to roll out of harm’s way. But I don’t, can’t, blame Zoe Brown for the bruise. I must not have held the cotton ball tightly enough. Zoe Brown gave me Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. Nothing she does could ever be wrong.

  Web says, “I’m really not saying this to weasel out of responsibility, but you could get tested if you’re that worried.”

  I show him the bruise, and he nods thoughtfully. “Yeah. Well, I did, too.”

  “Get your results back?”

  “Yeah. Negative.”

  “Okay.” Thank God.

  I know the next question, but not when I’ll ask it. In that respect, I’m waiting to be surprised. I throw my gaze up to the ceiling, My Employer’s high-beamed ceiling. A long throw. I leave it there for a minute or two.

  Then I say, “The only question now is whether you’ve been exposed in the last six to nine months. Whether you’ve done anything in that time to put you at risk.”

  My gaze falls back down from the light wood beams of the ceiling. I am peripherally watching the side of his face, feeling him try to answer. Anyway, it’s too late. A good answer, the kind I might have liked, would have arrived by now.

  Artemis trots into the room, swinging around to Web’s side of the bed, moving purposefully. Web jumps.

  “Call him, Lilly.”

  “That’s Artemis.”

  “Oh, right. It is, isn’t it?” It seems strange that he couldn’t tell them apart, wouldn’t recognize the graying muzzle, the smaller, shorter ears. “Hi, Artie. Hi, boy.” He scratches vigorously under the dog’s chin. When he stops, Artemis flops onto the carpet with an elongated grunt.

  “I’m still waiting.”

  “I know you are. I’m trying.”

  I’m tempted to say, “Yes, you are. Very.” But we might be close to something.

  I say, “You know. You’ve got that beautiful woman at home.” I’ve never said anything like that about Diana before. Not even in the privacy of my own head. “And you’ve got me. And it’s not enough for you. Why is that?”

  The question hangs in the air for a painful length of time. I think, Why is this so hard? People talk to each other all the time. Every day. Why are we so bad at it?

  “There’s no easy answer for that.”

  “Then give me a difficult one.”

  I can hear him breathe. He says, “Have you ever done this? Have you ever done something, even though it didn’t make a lot of sense in your head…and all the time you’re doing it, you continue to think of yourself as someone who would never do such a thing?”

  Of course I have. Hasn’t everybody?

  “You’re not exactly answering the question.”

  “What was the question again? Was it what did I do? Or why did I do it?”

  “Both would be ideal.”

  “I think I know why, but I’m not sure I know how to say it.”

  “Try.”

  “I think it’s something that…I think if I…well, if I don’t…that part’s clearer. If I don’t, it’s like I don’t know for sure if I’m alive anymore. I might not be. I lose track of how to tell. Does that make any sense at all?”

  It makes an eerie degree of sense, but I don’t tell him so. There are points for what you don’t say.

  “Who is she?”

  “It’s not like that.”

  “Who is he?”

  “No, it’s definitely not like that.”

  “Has to be one or the other.”

  “It’s not any one person. It’s just this occasional experience. This anonymous experience. I don’t know why the anonymity should be important, but it is.”

  “In other wor
ds, it’s lots of people, and you have no idea who any of them are.”

  “Oh, God, I hate to talk about this. I’ve never talked about this with anybody.”

  “And you can’t take the same precautions there as you do with me?”

  “Well, I can. Usually. It depends on the circumstances. How fast everything happens.”

  “I can tell you were never a Boy Scout.”

  “Huh?”

  “Do you use protection with Diana?”

  “I’d rather not get into that.”

  “You don’t, do you?”

  “Lilly, please. Not that.”

  “You don’t, because she assumes she’s in a monogamous relationship. So you can’t.”

  “Lily, please.”

  “Fine,” I say. “But if that’s off limits, so is my bed.”

  He sighs, pulls to his feet. On his way out, he hangs in the door in that special way. He says, “I was hoping you’d understand.”

  I say, “I do understand. That’s why I’m throwing you out.”

  I take my lunch to Turtle Park. Today my lunch is jumbo shrimp. Another example that I have been aesthetically spoiled.

  I have only a few non-dog-related duties. One is to answer My Employer’s fan mail, the tiny portion of it that makes the cut past Susan, her personal secretary. For this, I receive cash, an hourly rate. Another is to keep the house stocked with expensive protein. Steaks, shrimp, lobster, salmon. On the off chance My Employer shows up hungry. When she doesn’t, it’s my duty to consume and replace it. I am the most pampered poor person I know.

  I sit on the bench under the trellis in Turtle Park, focusing on the climbing vines, their thick, ropey trunks braided like a spoiled child’s hair. I wonder if they did this on their own.

  When I look up, I see a startlingly familiar face. My gut reaction is to think I’m seeing someone from my old life in L.A., because I don’t know anyone here. Not that well. An instant later, I realize it’s Zoe Brown. I realize it’s lunch hour; she is carrying a brown-bag lunch, and, like me, she is drawn to Turtle Park.

  She is walking down the path in my direction. I’m stunned by how happy I am to see her again. I had no idea that etched line cut so deep. I can tell by the way she looks at me, at my bench, that this is her usual spot. So I move all the way to the right and scoot my lunch onto my lap to make room for her. She hesitates, as if there must be options, a better way. She doesn’t want to sit with me. I feel irretrievably dirty. Maybe I really am the answers to her sexual Spanish Inquisition. Maybe that’s me, and I can’t move away from it. Maybe it lives with me, in me, and I can’t get it out of my eyes, and it shows.

  She sits down.

  I say, “Hello.” She smiles and says nothing. I eat a jumbo shrimp. I’m tempted to offer her one, but I am aware that she would have to take it from my hands. I am unclean. I say, “You probably don’t remember me. You probably see a lot of people.”

  At first, she says nothing at all. She is looking away from me, toward the koi pond, showing her facial bones in dramatic relief. I think I am too filthy to address. I think she wishes I would go away. As I’m about to do just that, she speaks.

  “I remember you.”

  “Obviously, not fondly.”

  “You don’t get it, do you?”

  “Get what?”

  “Anonymity. Yours. I have to respect it. It’s my job.”

  “Oh, right. That.” I hadn’t thought of that. “Can’t I just sort of…waive that?”

  “Technically, no. But I won’t tell the county if you don’t.”

  I say, “Cool.” I hold out the container of my lunch, wondering why I hadn’t thought of that before. Let her use her own fingers. “Shrimp?”

  She regards my potential gift. A chest of gold doubloons has been opened; she is offered as much as she can gather in her hands.

  “Really?”

  “Take all you want.”

  She takes three. And eats them in restrained nibbles, as though not anxious to lose their company.

  I say, “I just wanted to thank you for something. That’s the only reason I’m talking to you.” It’s really only part of it. I want to talk to her. I feel I know her. But I choose to sanitize myself, my intentions, though there’s nothing inherently wrong with them. I just feel the need to turn them into something of which the county might approve.

  “Thank me? For what?”

  “The Band-Aid. If I’d ended up with somebody else, would I have gotten Snow White?”

  “Nah. My own special touch.”

  I can’t explain why it mattered, why it cut and left a track of itself. Something about that moment, that experience, its ability to reduce, to regress me. I don’t try to say it out loud. I don’t need to. If she didn’t know, she’d use plain Band-Aids. I watch her nibble at the last pink shrimp tail, and I extend the bowl again. She gathers a few more.

  She thanks me. She says, “You always eat this well?”

  “It’s a long story. I’d like to ask you something, off the record. If I may. Something you might be able to answer.”

  “I hope I can. I’ll talk as long as you feed me shrimp.”

  I watch her long, graceful fingers, the white moons of her short, even, unpolished nails. Maybe she comes here often. Maybe next time, I’ll bring more shrimp. A lot more.

  “It’s kind of a moral dilemma. Let’s say you have reason to believe that someone is engaging in risky behavior. And then putting someone else at risk. Without their knowledge.” I look off in the direction of the church on Santa Barbara Street, the church across from the park, where Diana teaches beginner pottery classes in one of those annex rooms. “Let’s say they think they’re in a monogamous relationship, but really, their partner is bringing home risk. Lots of it. And I know it. Do I have, like, a responsibility?”

  “Legally or morally?”

  “I don’t know. Both, I guess.”

  “Has he tested positive?”

  “No. He’s recently tested negative.”

  “Then legally, no. If he’d tested positive, he’d be legally required to list all his contacts. And if he held back some, and you had knowledge of it…. Well. You know. It would almost be a kind of complicity. Only nobody would know it but you. Morally, I don’t know. I can’t really draw somebody else’s moral line in the sand. You know? It’s everybody’s responsibility to protect themselves during sexual contact. If they don’t, they’re at risk. No matter how much they think they trust their partner.”

  “So you think I should stay out of it.”

  “I didn’t say that. I just wouldn’t say it’s necessarily your moral responsibility.”

  I drop my head back. The sky is deep blue, shot through with clouds, filtering through the trellis vines. I love this place. I’m drawn here. Zoe Brown is drawn here. There’s some tie that runs through us, between us. I knew that the first time I saw her.

  I say, “Most people would figure it’s between the two of them and leave it at that. It’s none of my business. But I keep thinking…. Let’s say I’m walking down the street, and I see a very old woman being mugged. This is not that extreme a comparison, because they’re both life-threatening situations. For different reasons but in both cases, the victim is unable to fend for herself. And I say, ‘Well, that’s really none of my business. It’s between her and her mugger. A private matter.’”

  “Yeah, but people have a more personal relationship with their sex partners than with their muggers.”

  “True. Often regrettable, but true.”

  “You think that’s regrettable?”

  “I think some lovers are not much better than muggers.”

  She nods slowly, like she’s not sure. Like she’s still thinking. I hold the bowl out to her again. She shakes her head. She rises and sorts herself to go, though she hasn’t eaten her own lunch, the one she brought.

  “Thanks for the shrimp.”

  “My name is Lillian, by the way.”

  “I wish you hadn’t told
me that.”

  “Sorry.”

  “When you come in again, try to get somebody else. Come on Monday if you can. I’m off on Monday.”

  “I already went back. It was negative.”

  “In nine months, then. Your next one. Come on Monday.”

  “Nobody has to know I told you my name.”

  I’m peering up into her face, shielding from the sun with one hand. Wondering over the gravity of this mistake.

  “I don’t want to give you your results. Now that you have a name and a bowl of shrimp and a moral dilemma. I don’t want to be the one to have to tell you.”

  “It’ll probably be negative.”

  I’ve gained some confidence since Web’s negative. Either that, or I simply choose not to live nine months in fear.

  “Yeah. Probably. Come on Monday.”

  I sit in my car on Santa Barbara Street until I see Diana pull up. I’d know her car anywhere, because Web drives it half the time. It draws a reaction from me, just to see it, as if something exciting is about to happen. It’s all very Pavlovian. She cruises slow, on the prowl for a parking space.

  I’m not going to talk to her. I don’t know that I never will, but I know I won’t now. Even Zoe Brown wasn’t sure. Imagine my confusion.

  She waits for a young couple to walk to their car and pull out. Her hair is reddish and long. Something charmingly frail about her. She is more Web’s age, more appropriate for him. I think I’m trying to say they make a lovely couple, but no. Not that. It may be true, but let someone else say it. Preferably out of my earshot.

  She steps out of the car. Her legs are long and thin, her skirt as short as taste allows; she wears modified heels. I watch her walk. I watch the femininity in her step, wonder at its relationship to vulnerability. If someone were to jump her right now, try to hurt her in any way, I wouldn’t even think first. I wouldn’t hesitate. I’d be out of the car; I’d be across the street. I’d be on him. I don’t even know why, but I would. I wouldn’t let him do that to her.

  On the drive back to My Employer’s house, I think about pottery. I think I might like to learn pottery.