And she showed it so easily, revealed it so guilelessly. Really, she had no control at all.
What did his mother show?
Displeasure, with a small compression of lips and sometimes with a dazzling, perfect smile. Pleasure, with a similar smile; those who did not know or understand her often mistook the one for the other, to their detriment. She shed no tears except once, only once, and she did not rage, although she exposed her fury: it was ice and storm, and it promised death, or rather, an end for which death would be a paradise, a blessing.
She did not show joy, if she ever felt it at all, and no sorrow touched her face, except once—and all who were witness died thereafter, all but he. Once, he had mistaken exultant, wild triumph for joy. Once.
But watching this woman bake, he knows that there is joy in what she does, and it requires no death; she takes delight in blending these odd and unpleasantly messy ingredients into something that resembles edible food. She approaches it not as a vocation and not as a cause; nor does she approach it as a foe with which to do battle and over which to triumph.
She finds joy in the idea that what she makes will be eaten, that it will be enjoyed.
He has pointed out that this joy is ephemeral; it will not—cannot—last. She laughs; she laughed then.
“Nothing lasts forever. If we were all stuck in the moment of our single brightest day, we would never learn anything, never grow, never find new joys.”
“Nor would you find new sorrows and new pain. Many, many are the people who wish never to have loved at all when love falls to ruin and despair. You must see them, night after night, in your place of employ; tell me I am wrong.”
“Oh, you’re not wrong,” was her quiet—and oddly thoughtful—reply. “But that’s what happens when we’re in pain—it’s our whole world. It’s all we can see.” She hesitated, and then said, “You’re young. I’m not.”
He didn’t argue, aware that the lack of demur is a lie of omission, and quite comfortable with the fact.
“To be older—like I am—is to realize that it’s not all pain; it’s just what we’re looking at at the time. We expose ourselves to pain when we open ourselves up to life. But we also open ourselves up to joy. It’s joy that we need, to survive.”
He glances at the dripping mess she has made of all her disparate ingredients and says, “This activity brings you joy?”
“Yes, Mr. Spock, it does.”
“And you feel that this is necessary for survival?”
“Yes.”
“You are incorrect.”
She sighs, brushes hair out of her eyes with the backs of her hands, leaving a trail of flower in the gesture’s wake. “I suppose you’ll tell me—”
“I have some personal experience with what is necessary for survival, yes.”
She looks over his shoulder, at the expanse of his perfect home. “Maybe I chose the wrong word, then. Without joy, we can keep going. We can keep our heads down. We can keep putting one foot in front of the other.” She turns her back to him and begins to spoon the mixture into the tin cups of the pan. “But that’s not living. That’s not life.”
“What is life to you?”
She shakes her head. “It’s little things, really. Like baking. Or singing. Or painting, not that I’m any good at the last two. It’s—just—” she shrugs.
While she works, the small ones come out of invisible corners, drawn by her constant motion. If he’s being truthful, so is he, but they’re almost mindless in their greed and desire for what she prepares. He frowns at them, in warning; there are reasons he has never taken to the cooking that so entrances her.
But she doesn’t see them. She doesn’t see the way they cling to her shadow, hugging its lines, their faces upturned, calculating. They know only that she is baking for the joy of it, that she intends to share—and they stand on the outside of her circle, joyless, uncertain as to how to cross it, how to make themselves known. What she wants to give, they want to receive, but they have never, ever been good at asking.
Asking is not a trick that many of his kin have ever learned. They travel from the extreme of outsiders everywhere: wanting, desperately, to be on the inside, and despairing over their invisibility. That despair will drive them to small acts of malice in the end; they are not capable of large, not these. They cannot think of themselves as unworthy—not in comparison to the big people—so they must think of the big people as unworthy, ungrateful, deserving of punishment.
He clears his throat, and they freeze in place, as if by being utterly motionless they might pass beneath his notice. But he has gone through the effort of making his home as perfect as possible in order to be free of the small ones; they do not do his laundry, they do not clean or sweep or keep his windows closed—or open; they offer him no necessary service because he has allowed room for none. By this, they should know they are both unnecessary and unwanted, and they should leave him in peace; let them find someone else upon whom to shower their unappreciated largesse.
It is always a fine game; if one accepts their labor, one must pay them in the coin of their desire. People think of it as barter—and it is—but they do not understand what the coin of that barter is: the small ones desire, always, to be feted, appreciated; they desire gratitude, and it had better be genuine.
They did not do this in his mother′s home. They would not dare; they might be permitted to occupy themselves in their constant chores, but something as menial as housework and tidying was beneath his mother′s notice. Once, she overheard their small congress, and she summoned them all, from the furthest reaches of her lands. She destroyed one in three, without exception, in icy silence, and they did not dare to speak her name again for decades, not even in their malicious and hurt whispers.
He clears his throat again. He has not seen them in a very long time, by design, and he is surprised that they dared to come here. They are still frozen, like rabbits in the headlights of approaching cars, and he would kill them as vermin if he thought she could continue to be so blind. But she turns. “Yes?”
He recovers, because he has always done that exceptionally well. “You failed to finish. What is life, to you? If it is not the love that others seek—”
“Love means different things to different people,” she says quickly. “When you use the word, what do you mean? I can’t help but notice that you never leave the bar twice with the same woman, and you seem to live here alone.”
“Ah, but I do.”
“Really? Who?”
“You.”
She laughs. She laughs. She feels no threat at all, no danger. “I meant someone you’re actually interested in.”
He retreats into artifice, as it has served him so well. “I have been interested in every woman I have accompanied out of your bar, but they are not interested in me, in the end.”
Her eyes widen; they narrow just as quickly. “You’re joking,” she says, in a tone of voice that implies that she thinks he’s lying.
“They are interested,” he continues, “in wealth. They like the address, they like my clothing, they like my car. They are not as impressed with my position at the university, but are willing to accept it.” He smiles; it is a careful smile that treads the edge between a grimace of pain and genuine amusement. “They are not interested in me.”
He has said this often in the past; it seems to mollify women. It doesn’t, however, mollify this one.
“Well, how much of you do you show them? How can they be interested in something they’re not even allowed to see?”
He is nonplussed, and retreats into defensiveness. “I am entirely myself,” is his cool response. “What they see in me, they project.”
“Meaning they see what they want to see?”
He nods.
“And not what you want them to see?”
He fails to nod a second time, sensing a trap in her words. She is not particularly artful, not cunning, but she cannot be easily moved once she has focused on a subject. Yet it is n
ot her interest to be seen as an expert, it is not necessary for her to be seen as right; she pursues her small victories for reasons he does not understand.
If he understood them, he would have moved on by now. “What do you mean?”
“Look at this apartment. It doesn’t even look lived in. There’s no mess, no clutter—and I’ll grant you that’s attractive. But . . . there are no pictures, no sentimental things—no mugs with funny sayings, no kitchen counter clutter, no fridge magnets. All of your towels match. All of your furniture matches. Your clothing matches your furniture.”
“And?”
“Your clothing generally matches your car.”
“I fail to see—”
“You can’t tell me you do that by accident. You want to be seen in a certain way; that’s the way you’re seen.” She breaks the two sentences by the action of turning on the stove. “If you want them to see more, there has to be more.”
“There is more,” he says.
“Yes, well. There always is. I meant you have to be willing to expose more.”
“You mean, in the way that you do?”
At her feet, the little ones are watching. Their heads move in unison, back and forth, back and forth, as if something portentous is being said. Except for the odd one out; he is watching the pans with an open expression of hunger. Let it be said that they are not starving in the traditional sense of the word; they are plump and short and round in belly, round in jaw; they are barefoot because they prefer it; shoes are a trap.
“No.” She opens the oven door, slides the trays in, one beside the other, and rises. “Not the way I do. I’m me; you’re you. I could never live in a home this tidy; the stress of keeping it perfect would kill me.” She smiles as she says it. “I’m good enough with money that I don’t starve; I’ve never been focused enough to be a lawyer or a doctor or a—whatever you are. Look, I’m not telling you to be me—you’d hate that. I’m telling you to be more you. How did we start talking about this anyway?”
“You asked me about the absence of love in my life.”
She raises a brow. “You asked about the absence of love in mine.”
“Very well. We are both people who are accustomed to doing without love.” He shrugs and turns away.
But she hasn’t finished yet. “No, we’re not.” He turns back as she begins to clean. “I love.”
“But you live alone.”
“It’s not just people I love—although I have a lot of friends I do love. I love baking,” she tells him. “And singing, and painting, and walking. I love listening, and I love—” she laughs broadly, “talking. I love to talk. I love to eat.”
“These are not—”
“They’re things I love. I don’t always know what other people love—or hate—about me, and I can’t be responsible for how they love or how they don’t. But I can love what I love, regardless.”
“These are the things you mentioned when you spoke of joy.”
“Ye–es.” She walks to the sink, washes her hands, glances at the floor where the small ones are staring at her, open-eyed and hungering. “You know we’re all alone, right?”
He is silent.
“But I can’t be responsible for what other people feel or think or love. When I was younger,” she adds, checking the clock before she turns to face him, her hands still slightly wet, “I thought that anything I loved—anything at all—must be loved by everyone. If they knew about it, they’d love it the way I did. I didn’t understand, then, that I didn’t love what they loved, either; I dismissed what they cared about if I didn’t. It was stupid, or selfish, or vain.” She laughs; there’s a hint of bitterness to it, but it isn’t ugly.
“Now? I know that we love what we love, see what we see. Sometimes you’ll meet someone who sees what you see—and that’s a gift. You can share, then.”
“And this sharing is important?”
“I think so. Sometimes it’s only little things. Food, baking. Sometimes it’s larger than that—children, for instance. But children are much, much more complicated than baking.”
He has never cared for children, but deems it wise to keep that to himself.
She knows, however. She knows, but she doesn’t judge—and why should she? It’s not as if she has any of her own. He is curious now; he has never seen her home, and he wonders how it compares to his. It’s not as large, certainly, and not as fine; he doubts that it’s nearly as private. He guesses that her furniture is old and worn, that it is mismatched, that her walls and her counters are cluttered. But there is something about her that makes him uncertain.
It’s strange. His mother was a force of nature in her own right: if she was in a room, all eyes, all ears, all attention, accrued to her. She loved perfection, always, and beauty; she loved elegance and a certain refinement, although a certain raw power could appeal to her for a limited time. She tolerated cats, but disdained dogs; he had no pets that he can now remember. Once he brought a guinea pig home; she drowned it for vermin, and he did not make that mistake again.
She was what she was: irreproachable, untouchable. He could predict with certainty what she would—or would not—do, but that certainty never gave him any comfort; his mother was feared, and that fear was universal. Did she have pets? Yes: caged birds, brilliant in color; they did not speak when she was in the house, although the moment she left it they knew. They had raucous, ugly voices that in no way matched their plumage, but even they understood the cost of using those voices where they might disturb his mother.
“Have you found no joy in your life? Do your studies bring no joy to you? Is there no music that takes your breath away? No song, no poetry? Do you not hear the stories of strangers and feel moved to tears or rage?”
“No. Their lives are not my life.”
“Is there nothing that you want to share?”
He stares at her, although this is risky. She always asks odd questions, but this conversation has taken a turn that he did not expect. She asks the words without subtext, without any desire of her own. He does not know how to turn them, how to make them into something other—because such transformations must have some kernel of truth at their heart. “What do I have to share?” He finally asks, lifting an arm to a perfect room—to a room she has seen as empty, because in truth, it is. “I have money, and it buys a brief happiness for others, but it is like any other drug; habit-forming. It does not sustain.”
“Starvation is worse,” is her clipped reply. She bites her lip, exhales, and adds, “I’m sorry. I hear a lot of poor rich kids, and sometimes—” she shakes her head. “We all think we’d appreciate the things that other people don’t, and we’re probably wrong about it. You don’t trust people who want your money.”
“No.”
Her eyes narrow. “Do you trust anyone at all? Ever?”
He laughs. It is the first time he has laughed like this, in front of her, and she takes a step back, hitting the counter and coming to a halt. “No,” he says, when he can speak again. “It is not a habit that was ever encouraged. I do not have faith.”
“I wasn’t asking about your religious beliefs—”
“But you were, my dear. You simply don’t understand how or why.” This time, he walks into the kitchen, into the sphere of the space he usually circumvents so carefully. He opens the fridge she both admired and despaired of, and removes a bottle. “I will have wine, I think. Will you join me? You are not working.”
She hesitates, and then nods. “I’m not sure it’ll go with the muffins,” she adds.
“How is trust a religion?” She asks, as she takes a chair, crossing her legs rather than letting her feet touch the floor. She does not sit upright; she lounges, and in these chairs, that should be difficult. He cannot imagine his mother would like a woman such as her. He cannot imagine that this woman would care for her, either. But he thinks it, as if it is relevant, and he opens the bottle with enough force it’s a small wonder the neck doesn’t snap in his hands, which would be awk
ward.
“If you are a scholar of human nature, you will have come across the phrase ‘every man for him-self′.”
She grimaces. “It’s usually an excuse when an apology would be better.”
“And one is to apologize for rational self-interest?”
Her expression is momentarily weary; it says “oh this again.” But she is here, a guest, and she accepts the odd challenge beneath the surface of his words. She also accepts the very fine glass he offers her. He seldom sees her drink anything but water, and she hesitates, gazing at the amber wine as if it is a danger.
He waits, and after a moment, she accepts the danger and drinks; her expression changes, brows lifting into her scraggly hairline in silent wonder. When she looks at him again, her eyes are still wide, still round, but they are clearly now. She has always seemed so soft—in line, in build, in word—it is striking to see that there is hardness to her; it comes to the surface as she sets the glass down.
He waits for her accusation, for her acknowledgment, for he is almost certain that she knows what she has just imbibed. But as if this were a play, a carefully scripted and memorized act, he picks up the threads of his words.
“No, there is no need to apologize for rational self-interest. It’s the definition of ‘rational’ that I object to.”
“How so?”
“Do you think I’m baking for you?”
“You are demonstrably baking for me.”
She shakes her head. “I’m baking for me. I want to feed you.” She glances into the kitchen and adds, “And anyone else here who happens to be hungry.”
They have not followed her to the table; they haven’t dared. But they have clambered up on each other′s shoulders and are peering through the glass—or making the attempt; some jostling, shoving and pushing is expected, and it occurs. He is shocked when she sets her glass down, pushes her chair back from the table, and goes to the kitchen. It is an act of surrender.
“There is enough for everyone,” she tells them, her hands balled in fists on her hips.
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