The Lost Language of Cranes: A Novel

by David Leavitt

  As for Rose, across the table from him, she too smiled at Winston. From her vantage point—and she had the ultimate vantage point, the secret agent's longed-for anonymity, that of the nearly invisible, the unnoticed, the undesired—she observed how Philip and Owen mooned over Winston. They worked together in her mind, twin oafs from a thirties comic strip. She observed their mouths, always moving, smiling when they weren't talking. She observed their eyes, which was easiest, since they almost never focused on her, although they blinked brightly, lowered, cast up and down in a perpetual flurry of response and observation. She betrayed no feeling; indeed, she thought she had none. She was numb, a copy editor, scanning coldly with an eye for detail, until, for a moment, she found herself wanting to stand up and topple the table, let the spaghetti and sauce and water glasses fall over all these men. She closed her eyes and counted to five. The impulse passed.

  It seemed unlikely that she would be able to hold back from confronting Owen much longer; probable, now, that he would leave her or that she would leave him. As the wronged one, she supposed, the choice would be hers. But what would she choose? Oddly enough, the thought of leaving the apartment, of losing the apartment, no longer terrified her. Indeed, she was almost eager to get out of it. But where could she go? Probably to her cousin Gabrielle in New Jersey. And yet she knew Gabrielle was a bargainer. She would not accept no questions asked. Intimacy would be the price Rose would pay for being put up, even for a short while, because Gabrielle would not let her go until she had told her. And now she tried to imagine telling her, tried to imagine what the words would sound like, how she'd phrase it, the perverse freak accident of fate, the terrible coincidence (or was it a coincidence?): her husband and her son. Either, separately, had been the subjects of books, television movies, talk shows; both together was the stuff of tabloids, with headlines blaring above ugly lime-green and red photographs of movie stars: N.Y. WOMAN DISCOVERS HUSBAND AND SON SHARE SICK SEXUAL SECRET. Gabrielle would nod with concern, almost smiling, pity and delight firing in equal portions behind her eyes; and then disbelief; and the shocked, lewd thrill of the horrible, passed back and forth in whispers over the phone to her friends, other women, other wives, preceded by, "You'll never believe"—the delight in someone else's tragedy undercut only by gratitude that it isn't your own. "Can you imagine what it would feel like?" she'd say, and the answer, always—"I don't want to imagine it. I don't have to." And then they would go back to their lives, those wives, those friends of Gabrielle's in New Jersey, a little more grateful, a little less dissatisfied than they'd been before, and soon enough forget her. Rose raged at the looks she imagined receiving from Gabrielle, from women at work, from Penelope and Roger. They would fix her up with divorced men and kind widowers still mute from grief. But what men would want her? What if she did it to their sons, too? Oh, she did not want it, did not want to have to deal with any of it, did not want Gabrielle or offers of a new life or to leave this apartment or Owen. For how could Gabrielle understand? It was true that she was angry with Owen, furious with Owen. It was true that it had not been a great marriage. It had not even been a particularly good marriage. But it had been her life.

  She looked across the table now, her mouth weak, her eyes wet. Like boys, the three of them laughed together, and she remembered suddenly, vividly, her youth, the feeling of her youth. She was a junior at Smith when they met. The youngest of four daughters, she had watched her sisters battle and make up with her parents, watched them become trapped, even as they moved into adulthood, in an unyielding knot of power and disappointment. All her sisters now lived near one another and near her widowed father, in Chicago, and continued to lead their lives with and around one another, acting out again and again the ancient griefs and jealousies of their childhoods. Rose, the baby, born seven years later, had withdrawn herself from this hot atmosphere early on, made it clear she wanted nothing to do with it and planned to leave, and in doing so had brought down the wrath of her parents, who demanded loyalty from their children as fervently as if the family were a war-weary nation they were devoted to defending. Even now her father considered her something of a traitor for having moved away, for refusing to come home for family holidays. When she met Owen she had thought, "Here is someone who can save me. Here is someone who can care for me." Owen too was a youngest child, his parents too had been old when he was born, and his father had recently died. He had lived through his adolescence being bullied by an army of older brothers and sisters; perhaps that was why he had seemed so gentle, so much gender, at least, than the other men who had courted her. They dated for a time, and after two months made love in his little stuffy room in Somerville. Unlike the other men, Owen was not in much of a hurry for sex, and even seemed a little frightened, so that she wondered if he was a virgin and in the end had had to seduce him. But it was all right. He was so grateful, so surprised by her face above his when they made love that first time, that there were tears in his eyes, and she stroked his hair and kissed his forehead. For weeks after that he bought her gifts of rock candy and saltwater taffy from candy kitchens by the beach. And when they married, three years later, in a hotel in Boston, with the cheap band playing and the cheap little hors d'oeuvres being passed around, marching down the aisle on her father's tentative arm, she had looked at Owen as he came closer, as his bright, handsome smile, his thin face, came into focus, and she had thought she saw there evidence that everything was going to be right, that all her decisions were the right ones. What should she have seen? she wondered now. What had she missed? Wasn't Owen's gentleness evidence that no passion burned beneath his devotion, his gentlemanly love for her? "Save me, Rose," he sometimes murmured in bed, when they made love, in those early years, and she had wondered what he'd meant. Now, of course, she understood it all. He wanted her to guide him to the kind of life he longed to have, a family life, with children. But how could she have known that then? Homosexuality was a peculiarity to her, a condition to be treated in hospitals—not a way of life to be embraced or saved from. She had marched down the aisle, and now it seemed to her ironic that she should have seen in Owen's face assurance, a sign that she was making the right decision, when in fact she was making the first and largest of a series of mistakes that would carry her out into her life like an undertow, then cease, leaving her stranded, fifty-two years old, with nothing to look back on but a chain of wrong decisions carefully made, blindly made, an exam failed because the student has made one essential, thoughtless error over and over. Oh, why hadn't he told her? Why hadn't he let her know? Perhaps he imagined that those secret feelings he harbored would go away, fade with time; perhaps he thought he could cure himself, or that she could cure him. No, even if he'd told her, she realized (and it was a vague consolation), she would have married him anyway, would have believed, as he did, that marriage would provide the cure for the disease. The secret was thus buried, but even from underground it had its influence. A single lie, twisted and preserved, riddled the fabric of their lives together like a flaw in silk, so that a single rip might tear everything apart. They were not, and never had been, what they seemed; that she had somehow known all along. But how shameful that she had lived this life for more than twenty years, and never known, not even secretly, what it was they were.

  She was the mother. She sat at the head of the table, her hands clasped tightly around one another, and watched her son and husband dance around the flame of Winston Penn. She served, and watched them eat a fruit salad with ice cream. Then she got up and began to clear the table. "Let me help you, Mrs. Benjamin," Winston said at once, and to her surprise, she said, "Yes, that would be nice." She headed into the kitchen, and Winston followed her, and she smiled to herself, relishing their frustration at having Winston taken away from them. They piled the plates in the sink. "I'll wash, you dry," she instructed. And removing her rings, she pulled rubber gloves over her hands, filled the sink with warm water. "That's a beautiful ring," Winston said, pointing to her Rome ring—a delicate, bejewelled th
ing she had found in an antique store off the Via Cavour.

  "Oh, that?" she said. "I remember the morning I bought it. We were living in Rome for a year. Owen and I were out walking with Philip, and we saw this ring in an antique store window, and I loved it, I just loved it, the way you sometimes love a thing, even though you can't say why." She smiled. "It was expensive, but Owen said, 'Come on, Rose. Let's get it.' We had some money that year, from a fellowship Owen had won. But I'm talking too much—"

  "Don't be silly, Mrs. Benjamin."

  "Call me Rose—" She turned, and smiled up at him. "Rose," he said, and looked away, and suddenly she knew. It had taken her three minutes to determine what they had been struggling to figure out all night. She wanted to laugh. All through dinner she had stared at Winston warily, suspiciously, thinking him the embodiment of her fate. It wasn't true. He alone was her comrade, her kind. And somehow it thrilled her, this knowledge that even now Winston could belong to her in a way that he could never belong to either of them.

  "Winston," she said, and felt herself running the name over her teeth. "Winston. That's an awfully old-fashioned name for someone as young as you:"

  "I used to pretend I was named after Mr. Churchill," Winston said, "but the truth is it's a family name."

  "I like it," Rose said. She handed him a pot hot from the bath of suds, steamy, and watched his rough, pinkish hands work the towel over its surface until it shone. A spot of moisture from the sink was spreading over his stomach. There was sweat on his forehead. He had wrists so thick that she imagined she could slip both of her arms through his watchband.

  Suddenly he snapped his fingers and said, "Now I know. All through dinner, Mrs. Benjamin—"

  "Rose."

  "—Rose. Sorry. All through dinner, I was trying to figure out who you reminded me of, and now I've got it. You look like Gene Tierney."

  Rose laughed. "Gene Tierney? You know Gene Tierney? At your age?"

  "Gene Tierney is the woman of my dreams," Winston said. "She's the greatest. I've seen every one of her movies. And you look so much like her. You've got that same... charged quality. That's the only way to describe it. Charged."

  "Ha!" Rose tossed her hair out of her eyes. She knew he was watching her rubber-gloved hand move in a slow circle over a skillet.

  Owen and Philip came crashing through the swinging kitchen doors then, grinning. "Mom," Philip asked, "can I help?"

  "Let me dry, Rose," Owen said, "don't make Winston do it."

  She looked at them both, and suddenly smiled. "You're right," she said. "Winston shouldn't have to do this. Owen, you wash. Philip, you dry." And she led Winston into the living room, leaving Owen and Philip bewildered before the sink full of pots.

  "You're the best cook, Rose," Winston said in the living room. "I haven't had a meal that good in years."

  "Thanks." Suddenly, to her own fury, there were tears in her eyes. She kept smiling as if her life depended on it, turned away so he couldn't see.

  "Rose," he said. "Are you okay?"

  "Yes, I'm fine," she said. "Just fine." She pulled a tissue from a box, blew her nose. "Just don't mind me, Winston. Just—don't pay any attention. There," she said. "I'm fine. We have coffee. Would you like some? "

  Winston shook his head. "Actually, I should probably be going soon. I've got to get ready for my classes tomorrow." He looked at her, worried, and she said, "You're a charmer, Winston Penn," and smiled, and blew her nose again.

  He smiled back. "You are, too, Rose," he said. "You are, too." And suddenly, swiftly, he bent down and kissed her on the cheek.

  Then Owen and Philip re-emerged, drying their hands on their pants. "I'm afraid I've got to go," Winston said, putting on the coat Rose held out to him. "Philip, could I give you a lift somewhere?"

  "Sure," Philip said, and also put on his coat. "Goodbye, Mom." Then he bent to kiss her cheek, and to her own astonishment Rose found herself reaching out her arms and pulling him toward her, into an embrace he at first resisted out of sheer surprise, then gave in to. "Goodbye, Philip," she said, and looked at Winston.

  "Goodbye," he said.

  And now Winston turned to Owen, who stood, his hands still balled up in a towel, a look of vague disappointment in his eyes. "Goodbye, sir," he said in a tone of mock formality. "I'll be seeing you tomorrow."

  "Are you sure you have to go so soon?"

  "Afraid so."

  "Well, I'm glad you could come tonight, Winston, certainly glad you could come."

  "I am, too. Thanks for inviting me. Goodbye."

  "Goodbye," Owen said.

  Together the young men walked out the door. Rose closed it behind her, did up the locks. When she turned, Owen was sitting on the sofa, his eyes shut, his hands on his forehead.

  "Your mood certainly changes fast," she said.

  "I'm just tired, that's all."

  She took a cloth and began sponging the kitchen table. In the table, her face emerged, clear as in any mirror: a face on the verge of panic. Winston was nothing. It was Owen she had chosen, Owen she would always end up coming back to, no matter how far awry things went. He was her husband.

  He got up now from the sofa, and walked over to her. He was himself again, quiet, slightly absent, and he said to her, "Rose—"

  She smiled. Unexpectedly she reached up and touched his face. He had aged well. This man in his fifties was really not so far from the boy she had loved. They looked at each other, each holding back for the sake of affection the words that must now be spoken, each desperate to prolong this last moment of innocence.

  Then it was over. He sat down on the sofa, and she followed him, walking on to the window, looking out.

  "Well," he said. "How much have you figured out?"

  She closed her eyes, let the silence stretch out as long as she could bear, and then she turned to him and said, "Everything."

  OUTSIDE, on Second Avenue, pieces of garbage clung to the corners of the building before being swept downtown by the wind. The doorman was helping an elderly woman get out of a cab. One hand clinging to the hat on her head, the other to his arm, she warily stepped into the wind, as if she were afraid it might blow her away. "So you really have a car?" Philip asked.

  "Sure," Winston said. "Remember, I live in Hoboken."

  "It's very nice of you to offer me a ride," Philip said. "But I really don't want to take you out of your way."

  "No place is out of my way," Winston said, and Philip laughed, not sure what he meant. They walked down Forty-third Street, where Winston's car, a small red Toyota, was parked. "This is a nice car," Philip said, and Winston nodded. "It's little—but once you let her rip, this fucker could beat any Jaguar going around curves." He turned the key in the ignition, let the car warm up. "Where do you habitate?" he asked.

  "I live on the Upper West Side," Philip said. "But I wasn't actually planning on going straight home—I was going to visit a friend of mine, in the East Village."

  "That's cool," Winston said, pulling out of the parking space.

  "You're sure?"

  "Sure I'm sure. Like I said, I love to drive, and I don't get enough of a chance to, now that I'm living here in the greater New York metropolitan area."

  He honked like a taxi driver, maneuvering the car through the tight side-street traffic, "Are you in a big hurry?" Winston said. "I think I'll take you on the scenic route."

  "No, I'm not in a hurry," said Philip.

  "Good," Winston said. They turned onto Park Avenue. Winston dodged through a red light, and Philip settled back, grabbing onto the armrest for support. There was a stack of student papers on the back seat, a box of cassettes, and several copies of Milton. Above Philip's head, taped to the sunvisor, a pretty, dark-eyed girl smiled out of a snapshot.

  "Who's she?" Philip asked.

  "My girlfriend, Nancy," Winston said. "Or, I guess I should say, my ex-girlfriend, Nancy, at the moment." He laughed.

  "Why at the moment?" Philip said.

  Winston shrugged. "Mostly b
ecause I'm here and she's in Dallas," he said. "Long-distance is hard, you know?"

  "I know."

  "Well—Nancy's a nice girl. But I don't know—Hey, fuck you, you asshole!" he shouted to a taxi, which was attempting to cut in front of him.

  "What's wrong?" Philip said.

  "Yeah?" said the taxi driver, a thin, scraggly-bearded man wearing a bandanna. "Well, fuck you, buddy, you can just go fuck yourself far as I'm concerned."

  "And you can eat shit, you shit-wiping moron!" Winston closed the window and put on the gas. "You've got to learn to speak the local language," he said to Philip. They edged in front of the taxi, zooming through a yellow light. "Anyway, as I was saying, Nancy's a nice girl, but we've been together since we were fifteen. Fifteen! That's a long time. I don't know; I'm ready to meet someone else, maybe."

  Philip, still a little dazed from the shouting match, simply nodded. This man-to-man confidence made him uncomfortable. It had been a long time since he'd been in the company of someone who didn't know or assume he was gay, and he wasn't sure how to behave. Was it deceptive of him not to tell Winston outright? Would it be construed as a seduction tactic?

  "If you ask me," he said finally, "I think you're lucky. A lot of people would like that kind of permanence, a relationship to last their whole lives. I certainly would."

  "I guess," Winston said. "But Nancy and I—we were just kids when we started going out. We've been together so long I don't think we could even say what it was we see in each other. See, we're very different. She's not really an intellectual at all. Tennis is her thing."

  He took a sharp left, carrying them west into Harlem. On either side of the street, bits of life glowed from the shadows—a child's face staring into a garbage-can fire, an old woman doubled over with shopping bags—all in sharp contrast to the sedate East Side streets, which were chill and empty by nine.

  "My secret route," Winston said, "is New Jersey. I go over the George Washington Bridge and down the other side of the river. That way you not only get the best stretches of driving, you get to see New Jersey. I love New Jersey. I've discovered most New Yorkers don't know the first thing about the wonders of the Garden State. But when I met you, Philip, I said to myself, here's a guy who can appreciate New Jersey."