The bartender had his back to her and was washing a glass. Elaine stared out at the terminal—the people passing through. When she’d been young, her whole family would watch the show To Tell the Truth. She’d sit with them on the couch with its rose-patterned brocade fabric, running her finger across the delicate petals, the sturdy stems, the sharp thorns, imagining the touch of a boy’s spine. One night, while her parents held hands and she shared a pan of popcorn with her sister, the show’s host had declared to the three contestants, Will the real thief please stand up?
Beside her was the bottled water Herman Grace had ordered for her—she’d only noticed it now—poured into a glass, with a slice of lemon. Elaine looked down and smiled to herself. Her sweet, gentle mother would have said, you’re smiling from ear to ear, darling, why?
Society of Friends
As soon as we get in his Volvo, Marty puts on a tape, Little Anthony and the Imperials. “Remember?” he says. “Remember, Loon, when we saw these guys at the Latin Casino?”
I remember I haven’t been called “Loon,” my high school nickname for Lewis, since I graduated thirteen years ago. Nor have I seen Marty more than twice in all that time. He was my best friend for two years, fourteen to sixteen years old. We used to argue about our record collections (whose was immortal), about everything I suppose. When we happened to see each other at a movie last night, he insisted Sidney and I join him and his wife for dinner this evening.
“I got something to show you before we pick up the sitter,” he says.
Marty turns onto the dirt road of a farm where I often went with my parents to buy fresh eggs, sweet corn, and cider. The area still looks the same, a row of oak trees bordering the long driveway, and a wire fence tangled with blackberry bushes. Then I see a change where the oak trees stop abruptly. At the bottom of the valley are five high-rise buildings, three of them naked to their steel girders; the other two are finished, with only the soaped X’s left to be washed from the windows. Except for a few half-moons of grass, the entire valley has been cleared and graded.
“I own three,” Marty says.
“You own three of those buildings?”
“Three condos. Five thousand down, Loon—that’s all I paid for each one. You know what I can sell them for today?” He wets his finger and writes the figure in the air, complete with comma. “Two-hundred thousand.”
“So you’re a speculator now?”
“Come on, Loon, pull together a little cash and I’ll set you up with some nice holdings. Don’t play the poor man’s martyr. Nobody’s noticing these days.”
“I’m not looking for anyone to notice.” A station wagon turns up dust as it speeds by us to the apartments. “We’d better go,” I say.
“Now you’re mad at me, Loon. I’m trying to give you a little pep talk and you’re mad at me.”
“I’m not mad. I’m hungry.”
“Sidney asked me to bring you out here, you know.”
“Sidney? Never, Marty.”
“It’s the truth! You were in the john. She said you might go for something along this line.”
“Come on, Marty, grow up. She was kidding you.”
“Hey, buddy, ask the lady yourself,” he says, opening his hand flat the same way we did in high school when we were talking tough.
The rest of our ride is in silence, except for when the sitter joins us and begins chattering, apropos of nothing, about her volleyball team. I catch myself shaking my head over Marty’s remark, remembering how he was too impatient to ever listen carefully to me or anyone else.
Edna and Sidney are waiting on the front porch, evidently not hitting it off on their first meeting, Edna looking grim and Sidney not much better. I never knew Edna before. Marty met her in college. And Sidney doesn’t know anyone in the East at all. We’ve come back for a while to visit my parents. I’ve learned to distinguish between her silences, and this one seems more uneasy than contemplative.
The baby begins crying as soon as she sees the sitter. Like Edna, the baby has red hair and pale blue eyes. She wears a hot-faced scowl and screams upon being turned over to the sitter. Marty tells us to hurry and nudges us toward the car.
“The restaurant has no phone,” Edna says.
“Let’s roll,” Marty says, but he rushes inside the house and returns with two six-packs of beer under his arm. “Got to bring our own. No liquor license yet.”
“What should I do about the number?” Edna asks. “How’s she going to reach us if she needs to?”
“We’ll call from the restaurant. Come on, get in the car, Edna.”
“There is no phone.”
“Of course there’s a phone. There’s got to be a phone.”
“Marty, I’m telling you—”
“All right, for Christ’s sake get in the car! I’ll leave the address! She can call the police!” Marty searches in his wallet for something to write on, and finding nothing he can spare, he scribbles the address on a five-dollar bill and stuffs it into the babysitter’s hand.
“I love this place!” Marty says. Mounted on the wall are golden dragons, the jaws of one protruding right above my head. Aggressive Chinese music (someone angrily striking a xylophone?) comes from speakers hidden in the ceiling. Marty appreciated these places in high school. “Wait till you taste the mu shu beef,” he says.
Sidney and I are vegetarians, and I can tell Marty is disappointed when we order the Eggplant in Garlic Sauce and the Northern Style Vegetables.
“Veggie fanatics?” he asks.
“No,” I say. “Vegematics.”
He slaps his hand on the table, making Edna jump. “I love your humor, Loon!” He smiles, shakes his head, seems to grow warm toward me again. “So you’re no longer a hotshot advertising exec?”
“Not anymore.”
Somewhere between getting a job at an ad agency right out of college and then quitting after five years and trying to run a restaurant, I collapsed from nervous exhaustion and was hospitalized. Afterward was when I met Sidney, who brought peace and sense into my life. “Sidney and I work in a medical clinic now,” I tell him.
Marty’s eyes widen. “You went to med school?” I remember this was his dream. He wanted to be a surgeon and quit the football team—two hundred pounds in tenth grade—to join the biology club so he could do a cat dissection. But he got a terrible score on his college boards and barely made it into a junior college. On graduation night, he hit someone in the mouth for meowing at him in the lavatory.
“I’m not a doctor. I assist Sidney, who’s a nurse. A doctor volunteers his time. The clinic is free.” I pause a moment. “It’s run by Quakers. Sidney and I are Quakers.”
Sidney frowns at this last piece of information, confirming the hesitancy I had. A member of the Friends since she was young, she never talks about our work, never suggests that it’s a noble or even valuable task. But the experience—the satisfaction—for me is so new and pleasing that I brim over with enthusiasm, promising anyone the same steadiness, the delight of working hard without worry (this most of all), the wealth in service.
Marty takes a beer from the sack. “Do Quakers indulge?” he asks.
“We’ll split one,” I say.
“I think I’ll have my own,” says Sidney, surprising me. We usually share a glass of wine, if we drink at all.
Marty places a can of beer on everyone’s empty plates. “So what should we do after dinner?” he asks. “Do Quakers dance?”
Sidney leans over and touches his wrist. “Quakers have no legs,” she whispers.
Her serious tone and the lack of any past kidding from her on the subject of Quakers makes me as silent as Marty for a moment, half believing it myself. Then Marty bursts out laughing, and even Edna warbles a little chuckle through her tight lips. Marty keeps erupting—emptying his lungs with great blasts of joy, his eyes squeezed shut in unbearable delight. His fervor wins me over, and when he takes out a handkerchief, wipes his neck, and calls out “Bring on the unfortunate cookies!�
� I laugh like a fool, until I, too, ache.
At the bar that Marty drives us to, we find a table just large enough for us all to crowd around while we watch the dancers on the floor.
“Gimps!” Marty hisses. “You call that dancing? That’s a chain gang out there! Who wants to dance?” he asks.
“Cut in on someone,” I recommend when no one answers. “They don’t know you’re here yet.”
“We’d better call the sitter if you plan on staying long,” Edna says.
He takes off his tie and stuffs it in his pocket. “Okay, who’s going to be the lucky lady?” He stares at Sidney.
“Face it, Marty,” I say, “we’re chaperones now.”
“I’ll dance,” Sidney announces and abruptly stands up, gulping down half the wine the waitress has just brought her. They weave their way onto the floor and find a spot in the corner. Marty jitterbugs with surprising speed, stretching one arm out to make room for himself and shooting Sidney back and forth with the other. Her cheeks are flooded with color. Her shoulders sweep up when Marty spins her under his arm. Sidney is laughing, out of breath, alternately patting her chest and waving her hand in imitation of Marty. “Do you see that?” I say, amazed. “She’s dancing with him. Sidney never dances.”
For a moment when I glance at Edna, I think I see two white carnations, one on each breast. But it’s only her hands folded into tight fists across her chest. Her face couldn’t be more stoney: her mouth drawn taut, her eyes the blankness of blond wood. Then the expression suddenly shatters when she drops her head to the table with such forceful sobs that her glasses fly off.
Before I’m even sure I’ve seen anything, she removes a tissue from her bag, blows her nose, and without looking at me takes back her glasses that I’ve picked up from the floor and puts them on.
I realize she’s younger than I thought, probably several years younger than Marty. Her mouth tries to open several times, compresses with tension, and then strains to the side. “Don’t visit us.” She slides her hand forward to keep me from speaking. “Don’t visit us anymore. Please.”
I stare at her, waiting for an explanation. None comes. She says nothing, has nothing else to say. Any answer she might make is buried in the opaque whiteness of that hand, the skin looking as though it could be peeled back to expose another layer, one shade lighter, one lamination softer, going on like that indefinitely, whiter and more tender, never translucent, veinless. Her hand stops at the edge of mine. I nod, not sure why or for what purpose, promise we won’t see them again while we’re here, and she withdraws her hand, turning away to stare vacantly at the dancers.
I drive Marty’s Volvo back to his house. Sidney sits up front and Marty lies in the back, his head on Edna’s lap, one shoeless foot sticking out the window. He keeps patting me on the shoulder. His voice is deeply hoarse and just listening to him I can feel my own throat burning. “Could I have been a contender? Could I have been somebody, Loon?” I’m not sure what the correct response is to this question, but I vaguely remember something about answering the remark with a question in the negative. “Could you not?” I try.
“You remember!”
“Dare to be great,” I add…but evidently press my luck too far, because he keeps repeating the phrase, “Dare to be great…dare to be great,” trying to figure out how we used that one.
When we get to the house, Marty tells us, “You’re coming in for some coffee.”
Edna hurries inside to check on the baby. The rest of us stand in the driveway.
“I don’t think so,” I say. “It’s late. We should be going.”
Marty sighs heavily and walks to the front door. “Look,” he says, “you had a great time, right?”
“The best.”
“How about you, Sid? You like that high-stepping we did?”
“Very much.”
“Terrific. Ask me if I had a good time. Go ahead.”
“Did you, Marty?” Sidney says.
“Just ducky. Remember, Loon? Just ducky?”
“Gotcha Natasha. Stash it, Satchell.”
“What’s that mean?”
“Who knows,” I say, giving up. Edna doesn’t return.
“Marty, say goodbye to Edna for us.”
“You call me, Loon. You call me before you leave or I’ll cork your head and snap your mother!”
“Jesus, Marty.”
“Remember?”
“Yes, yes,” I swear, not remembering in the least and a little alarmed by his desperation. Marty stands inside the screen door, his face pressed against the wire mesh, flexing his two pudding thumbs goodbye at us.
“Loon!” he calls, but doesn’t say anything else.
I wait until we’re a respectable distance down the road before I ask, “What do you think—fun couple, huh?”
Sidney nods and pulls a yellow windbreaker over her shoulders. I loosen her short blonde hair from her collar, massaging her neck. She closes her eyes, drops her head—murmurs for me to continue.
“I was joking about them being a fun couple.”
“Hmm?”
“You didn’t really have a good time?”
“Yes. Didn’t you?”
“Not exactly. Edna was very upset about something. She started crying while you two were out on the dance floor.”
“So did he.”
“Come on! Did he?”
“There were tears in his eyes after we started dancing. I don’t know if it was from the exertion or what.”
We drive for a few minutes in silence. “Well,” I say, “we’ll never see them again anyway.”
Sidney slides down in her seat. “I’m tired,” she says.
“Listen, this sounds crazy, but Marty said you spoke to him about wanting me to be in real estate. Isn’t that a bizarre thing for him to say?”
“I did talk with him. I said you should be in a field where you can be more competitive.” I slow the car down. Her voice has an unfamiliar inflection. “It’s still very much in you, Lewis, all that rivalry—except now you want to be the best Quaker on the block.”
I don’t answer for a few minutes, weighing the criticism. I know I’ve changed in not leaping to my defense. “Why did you say you had fun tonight?”
“I liked dancing. I liked drinking. I liked all the noise. I even liked Marty twirling me and practically snapping off my wrist with his fandango. It felt good.”
It’s hard to keep my foot firmly on the gas pedal and not drift to a halt in the middle of the road. A current of pain heats the air in my lungs. I breathe with care until we pull into the driveway. We go upstairs and sit on the edge of the bed. The TV in my parents’ bedroom goes off, and when it does my throat tightens, the picture tube crackling for a few seconds as I remember it always did. We move only slightly, staring into corners, fingering curtain hems. After what seems ages, Sidney says, “You’re not trying to force silence, are you?”
I tell her I’m not.
My mother walks by our closed door, down the hall to click on the night light; she returns just as quietly to her room.
“So what happens tomorrow?” I ask. It’s starting to sink in. “Do I put on my long black robes and you your red satin dress and we go out solemn and sassy?” She makes a face. “What exactly are you suggesting?” I say.
“Sleep. Let me sleep,” she says.
I’m sitting down, but my feet clop nervously on the wooden floor. So I stand up, let them move around a little. “I’ll be back,” I tell her. Before I realize it, I’m two flights below, in the basement, arguing with myself, making points with my hands, my chin—the crown of my head.
Upstairs, I pace some more until Sidney comes out from the bathroom, a pale smile on her face. I return an even weaker smile and try to make up for it by giving her a tap on the arm—just like Marty and I used to do in junior high when we passed each other in the hall. We were at the height of our friendship then.
She hits me back. I stare at her. She socks me again. I look; she punches harder.
I can’t believe her violence. She smacks my other arm. I knock her back. Her knuckles rake my shoulder. Mine touch bone. We keep punching each other, not making a sound, wincing, refusing to budge.
Mort à Las Vegas
“Fun” was the way Tess phrased it. “I want to have fun.” Gene had asked her how she wished to remember Mom this year and Tess, at fourteen, two years older than she was when Janice died, answered, “I think I’ve done the grief thing.” Teary and clingy on the first anniversary of Janice’s death, his daughter had gone through a swift transformation and was now dismissive of any adult claims that she might be suffering residual effects over her mother’s death. Her favorite phrase, in regard to cooperating or pleasing anyone, was the bored, “Whatever ups you,” and her favorite activity was to lock her bedroom door, blast her iPod—Gene could hear it through her door and only imagine what it was doing to her eardrums—and thrash around in stomping madness. When she came out, her face was blazing red, her hair sweaty, and her clothes rumpled as if she’d been mauled by a bear or undergone some ecstatic ritual. He heard her sobbing in there too, but she always denied this was over anything other than it just “felt good.” Fortunately, she wasn’t cutting or starving herself, didn’t smell of liquor or pot, wasn’t purging or hoarding food or sleeping constantly, all signs of depression, Gene knew.
Regardless, she was firm about skipping the mountains and not doing a memorial service again, including having Janice’s large family come visit them in Colorado and be smothered by their sadness and pity. “Mom would want us to have fun,” she told him. The whole idea of going to Las Vegas made him wonder if Tess, having reached adolescence and its insistent focus on the now, was in a race to bury the past and her mother for good.
But perhaps he was conjecturing too much. He was a journalist and not particularly inclined toward the speculative or philosophical; it was a liability that got in the way of the facts. And the fact was, unlike him, she was doing remarkably well for losing her mother in a freak accident. “She’d want us to live it up, not get all gloomy,” Tess reiterated.
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