by gay walley
She got the ball into the putting hole surprisingly close. “I almost had a heart attack,” he said.
That night he came with her to see more old friends and he was bored. The next morning when she left, he taught her how to make a bed. Told her he would need to send her to wife school. She knew so little about being with someone. They still hadn’t made love. Some part of her knew they’d missed their time. And, for some reason, she didn’t blame herself.
She sat in his garden and read. She talked on the phone. She was generally happy in his small world by the sea. Could she do it? Was a husband worth her freedom?
Her father would know what to say. She would call him when she returned to New York. And make a decision.
She liked that David did not waste time with people. She liked that he was a perfectionist about his golf, as Oskar had been about tennis. She liked that he knew what he was doing. Now it was just a question of giving up New York. And the dream of loving someone as she had loved Oskar.
Thirty four:
Duet returned to New York a little more calm. Before she had left for Boston, she had had to arrange a funeral for Maurice and at the funeral, she’d had to face Adele and Maurice’s son, Troy, both of whom looked dolefully across at her as the coffin went down into the grave. The rabbi asked everyone present t o toss a handful of dirt onto the lowered coffin, which each dutifully did.
Paula kept asking Duet if she was going to sit seder with them.
“It’s shiva,” Duet smiled, “and no, I am not sitting with them. You know the Orthodox, which Maurice was not, tear their clothes for shiva. Adele probably wants to tear mine.”
Paula said nothing.
Duet added, “Maybe she was glad to get rid of him. She finally got a word in edgewise.”
Paula said, “You’re still upset, Duet. I can hear it.”
That was true. The whole event had sickened her and she now seemed to hate herself even more. She blamed her configuration for Maurice’s death. If she had been built normally, he would not have taken god knows how many viagras. He was trying to answer the call of the extreme, even if he didn’t know what it was. Or maybe he suspected from Daisy’s testament. No, impossible. She shuddered as she thought about it. She was created by evil in Austria and maybe she could only bring about evil here in America, a Nazi curse redux.
She had lost Oskar, he was probably chasing some French woman all over the Cote d’Azur, and now even David had stopped calling. He had given up and she couldn’t blame him. The afternoon she got home, she walked the dogs, came back into the apartment and put Samuel Barber’s plaintive string concertos on her cd player. She sat down to find something to read and the buzzer rang.
Fedex.
An enormous package that the efficient Ukranian delivery man, whom all the girls in the neighborhood couldn’t help noticing, had trouble carrying up the stairs. She signed for it, and smiled at him. He was as always professional.
The box was from Maurice’s wife. Duet got out her scissors and began slicing at the tape. The box finally opened and there was that doll of herself. That doll. That doll that Maurice thought looked like Alma Mahler and his mixing her up with that doll had been his undoing. Kokoshka at least had thrown his doll out. This doll was following Duet. Which one of them was real? The doll, she noted, was more perfectly formed than she was. If Maurice had stuck with his doll, he would have lived.
Her days were quiet now, the dogs and herself, and she started to look for a new job. Employers could see her checkered record at the last agency and were not jumping to hire her. Or maybe they saw that an introvert wasn’t the best choice for public relations in the first place.
She took a train to New Haven to visit an old friend she’d known in college, Leslie. Yale kids were on the train, talking seriously of their lives, knowing that the world would soon be theirs. It made her sad. She no longer slept well, feeling that she herself was a dangerous entity. What disasters would she set off next? She tried to acclimate herself to a life of solitude. Bad luck, was she a cause or a correlation? She wished Oskar was here because he would say, “You’re beginning to sound like stock market jargon.”
In addition, she needed to make money. Maybe employers could feel she was an oddity and would not bring her into their environment. Whoever got close to her, turned. Turned cold like Oskar, crazy like Maurice, indifferent like David. Well they must all secretly long for a normal woman. Her oddness must make them hanker more deeply for their own proclivities.
She finally found a part time job with a pr firm, and she signed up for more music composition classes. In her free time, she banged away at the piano, trying to write short pieces. Her composition teacher, Ms Maryann, liked her work and encouraged her. Sometimes before the class they sat and had a coffee and talked about men, music and money and Ms Maryann, an older woman, made Duet feel that life does not have to be normal and that, for people like them, on the outside, you plug along. You live with less money, you live with more music, and men, well, dear, that’s a particular difficulty for all women… Duet always left the music school feeling a bit better.
Duet realized that there were many people who lived on nothing but their dreams. It was a kind of richness in itself and she realized that she might have to be one of them. Perhaps those people were not even the ones who manifested their dreams. Dreams weren’t a bad salary, it’s just the grocery store didn’t want to be paid with them. Those who manifested their dreams were made of something else. Something practical, something selfish. The dreamers, the oddballs like herself, seemed to live magically, with the frustrations and the pleasures of a child.
The days went on till finally one morning she turned on her computer and saw an email.
“Dinner? Drinks? Dancing? Friday? Saturday?”
Well. Well. Well. Oskar. Out of the blue.
She spent the afternoon walking around, doing errands, trying to figure out her response. She did not want to get hurt again. But, even as she went in and out of the post office, the manicurist, the bank, she had the terrible feeling she would, as always, say yes.
That’s when her phone rang. Paula. “Guess where I am?”
“Where?”
“A certain little boy came early.”
Duet screamed. “What is he like?”
“Very very very cute.”
“Wait, I’ll come over to the hospital.”
“Wait for what? I’m not going anywhere. I’m at Beth Israel.”
“Need anything?”
“Nope.”
“I’ll come with champagne.”
“Hurry up.”
Duet raced out of the apartment and thought she would answer Oskar later. What she felt inside was a new happiness. She could tell Paula was not giving that baby away. She just sounded too happy.
Thirty five:
Paula was indeed ecstatic and Dash was as sweet as she had said, tiny, with a head of red hair, like his mother, and as they sipped their champagne and Paula let Duet hold him, Duet didn’t even have to ask Paula what she had decided. Paula had already put in for maternity leave.
“I’ll help you Paula,” Duet said, turning around as a young nurse wearing glasses quickly looked in on them , smiled, and as quickly left.
“Turns out these guys did do a few things right,” Paula giggled from her bed. Her red hair was all messed up but she was glowing, so proud of herself.
“Well your criminal did,” Duet said. “Not sure about mine.”
“Oh Duet,” Paula said, “Something good will happen to you, too.”
“Oskar wrote me today, you know. To get together.”
“What do you think?” Paula asked, completely fixated on her baby. She was interspersing her conversation with cooing sounds and gurgling and “Isn’t he sweet?”
“I dunno,” Duet answered.” Can Oskar be loving is the question. He may not have it in him.”
Paula nodded, then smiled. “Only one way to find out. You never know till you actually do it. Tell him we’ll get Das
h after him if he acts out.”
Duet smiled and looked at the little boy in amazement. It was as if she and Paula had had a baby.
“You better rest. I’ll come see you tomorrow.”
And then Duet headed out of the hospital. She thought she’d walk home in the afternoon the pretty way so she walked up Park Avenue and, as she walked, she passed the Brasserie and she haphazardly looked in the window. There, to her amazement, sat Oskar. He was sitting confident, handsome at a table by the window, smiling and pleased like a Cheshire cat and, across from him, sat Madonna.
Duet’s heart skipped a beat and just at that moment Oskar looked out the window and saw her. Their eyes quickly locked and a jolt of adrenalin shot through her.
She kept walking and thought I am not going to answer that email. You just never know with him what he is up to.
But when she got home, there was another email from him. He had resent the previous email. Must have sent it from the Brasserie, she said to herself, as she looked out the window furiously. Such confidence.
She knew him. He’d say, Why shouldn’t I have lunch with Madonna?
Madonna is the woman he chooses to live with, she thought. God knows who else he sees. Be careful, Duet, she told herself. She still didn’t answer him. She’d answer when she was less upset.
The next day she got another email. Don’t be a girl, Duet. Just make a plan with me.
The hell with him, she thought. I AM a girl. If he doesn’t want to be with a girl, let him start dating men.
She went back to the hospital and brought blankets and baby clothes and stuffed animals which made noises and thought I’m putting my effort into Paula’s little boy.
When she told Paula about seeing Oskar with Madonna, Paula said, “Maybe he just likes being with someone he has no emotional involvement with. Maybe that makes him comfortable.”
“Exactly,” Duet said. “And is that good for anyone who has a heart?”
“No,” Paula said.
But it was not in Duet’s nature to be inflexible so she knew soon she would have to start wrestling with the fact that he had every right to have lunch with anyone he chose.
She dialed Alan, the psychoanalyst friend, of long ago. She’d ask him his opinion. He studied human nature even though she knew in the old days he took any opportunity he could to slam Oskar, so she would switch camps. But the psychoanalyst didn’t know her situation. He just thought she was a beautiful woman who chose men badly. He had told her she had to learn to have sex with a loving man. A man who wanted all of her.
She met Alan at the Gramercy Hotel again. “You look great Duet.” She was wearing a white skirt and blue shirt, high heels. Her hair was up messily because lately she had trouble focusing on her looks. She was too astray inside.
He was wearing a white shirt, white jeans, loafers and no socks. Why would a mature man wear no socks to a bar?
When she told him what happened to Maurice, he clearly was shocked and amazed. He kept shaking his head and ordered himself another drink. She supposed she was his idea of a Black Widow spider. Get involved with her and you might die.
Then she told him about Oskar and herself. And Madonna.
“Of course he’s fucking her,” he said. “It’s an erotic situation. They live together. She’s young and cooking for him. He’s a father figure.”
“Then why would he email me?”
“I don’t know honey,” he said, laughing. “But I would be fucking her.”
Men, she thought. What help are they? They quickly resort to their own fantasies.
“You haven’t answered my question,” she said.
“What do I think you should do?” he asked.
She nodded.
“You should be with me. I want all of you. Your emotions, your sexuality and your mind. You should have it all with one man.”
She smiled wanly. Why had she thought asking another man might lead anywhere?
Thirty six:
The next night she and the dogs were on her couch, reading lazily and lost in their serenity. She was reading a book, and the dogs were intently reading her with their snouts resting on her legs. The buzzer rang again. As the three of them got up to answer it, she thought maybe it’ll be a murderer and that will end all my problems. But that thought was a luxury because she knew the two shepherds, who were now bigger, would never let anyone murder her.
She yelled down the stairs, “Who is it?”
No answer.
She turned to the dogs and said, “Must be Maurice’s ghost.”
And then she saw Oskar on her foyer.
“ Duet I don’t know how you do these stairs all the time. This must be how you know who your real friends are.”
As she had done in the beginning with Oskar, she said nothing.
He came in. “Want a scotch?” she said.
He nodded. She instantly took in the lightly checked shirt over his taut chest, and the blue jacket, the blue pants, and she couldn’t get over how drawn she was to him. She tried not to show it. He was of course assessing how she looked in her blue jeans and white v neck t shirt. “Have you lost weight?” he asked, which was the way most men complimented women.
The dogs, it turned out, were also happy to see him, not holding Madonna against him, and he even seemed happy to see them. “My god they’ve got bigger.”
She came back in and the four of them went to the living room.
He sat down. “What is that music?”
“Arnold Bax,” she said.
“God knows how you know all this stuff, “ he said.
“Paula had a little boy,” she said, “And she is keeping him. His name’s Dash.”
“Is his middle name Hyphen?” Oskar then smiled. “ Seriously, though, it’s great. Is she telling Lars?”
“No.”
“Ah deception breeds deception.”
She couldn’t resist it and said, “You would know about that.”
“I don’t know what I know about,” he answered, “but I know that Lars will be playing one long chess game with Bernie Madoff.”
She smiled, in spite of herself.
“I should fix Paula up,” he added.
She wanted to say, Why don’t you fix Madonna up, but she didn’t.
“So why are you avoiding me?” he asked, sitting there across from her, legs crossed, quite confident that he would win any contretemps they were about to get into. Those Benedict Arnold shepherds had lain themselves down next to him.
“Oskar, one thing about us,” she said, “is we never discussed the obvious. Let’s not start now.”
“Duet, there is so much about you that is not obvious.”
“Why are you here?” she asked. “Or rather, why are we here?”
“I missed the both of you,” he said cheekily.
Fuck him, she thought. And then she thought, Why don’t I? Why don’t I just fuck him? I like fucking him. And he might be the last man I ever fuck.
“Well, then,” she said, pulling off her t shirt, much to the confusion of the dogs and the amusement of Oskar, and then stepping out of her skirt so that she was standing there in high heels and nothing else since Duet, as some kind of anger at the lingerie industry for ignoring her own particular brand of woman, never wore underwear.
“I like a woman,”Oskar said, “who gets right to business.”
And then they went to her bedroom, quickly.
It was an odd phenomenon*** about Duet and Oskar. Maybe he was sleeping with Madonna, maybe he wasn’t but he and Duet had a certain animal attraction. It wasn’t her so called build. He said, “I wish Duet you would stop using that word, use something else.” He actually was stroking her body, gently. That was a first. And it was ridiculously calming as his hand moved from her breasts to her hips to her thighs and ultimately her pubis.
“What word would you prefer?” she asked.
“Situation, complication.”
She smiled to herself. He’s worrying about the word, whi
le she has to worry about the reality.
Oskar didn’t kiss. Oskar didn’t say cooing words. Oskar didn’t outdo himself in the tenderness department, but perhaps she had been bored with that in past years. Who knew? Maurice had been so achingly sincere and where did that lead? To death. Maybe Oskar and his uncomplicated servicing of himself, and his belief that that was enough for a woman, was a kind of poetry. She had always thought that she wanted the fire of a man, not his insecurities, and Oskar gave her exactly that.
He began to make love to both of her complications, as he called them, and held her hips and breasts, and they were silent, serious, his eyes closed, taking her in for himself, and she did not mind, this was in some way, to her, honest, and when he came, he said, “That was award winning.” And she laughed and cuddled in next to him, knowing he could care less about the physical closeness, and then she heard the sound of his snoring. Finally, it struck her. What Oskar understood about her and took at face value was her incomprehensible mystery. He knew she tried to live up to it. And he really didn’t try to change it. In his way, he accepted her as she was. And she accepted him as he was.
He left probably at about two in the morning because he missed his luxurious bed and his luxurious sheets.
And that afternoon, she got another email. “My cousin Axle is coming into town. Why don’t you, me, Axle and the new mother have dinner Friday night?”
She laughed out loud and said to the dogs, “Such self-assuredness,” as she began dialing Paula’s number. Who knows what configuration, she smiled to herself, would start up now.