by Amy Lapwing
“Now, son,” said Kim to Michael, deepening his voice, “remember our little talk. And have her home by— golly!”
The two walked toward the door, his hand light on the small of her back. “You look so good,” said Michael, dropping his hand to his side.
“Thank you. Where are we going?”
“I was thinking we’ll have dinner at this place in Brookhurst.” He led her to his big white Buick— didn’t my parents use to have a car like this? She thought— and opened the door for her. They both stifled a sigh of relief as they sat together.
“That sounds nice.” She wondered what they would talk about and hoped it would not be awkward. He started the car and pulled out of the parking lot.
“Your roommate, he’s a funny guy.”
“Yeah, he’s a good guy.”
“Have you had a man before?” he asked. “I mean, as a roommate.” She was looking confused. “I don’t mean, you know.”
“No, all my roommates have been girls before. Women.”
They were silent. The lights of downtown Merrifield slipped away behind them; the interstate lights glared up ahead.
“Excuse me, I’m going to scream now.” Justina let out a yell.
Michael looked at her in surprise.
“You want to help me out here?” she said.
They both yelled.
“There,” she said. “From now on, we don’t worry about whether what we say is clever. We just talk. How’s that sound?”
He laughed softly. “Very good. And not very clever.”
“Good.”
“Good.” His shoulders settled back down. “Were you in love really? With Kim?” He kept his eyes on the road, lifting his eyebrows as he blinked, as though he had asked her her favorite color.
“He’s the son of friends of the family. I’ve known him all my life. He’s like the brother I never had. I told him about Kennemac after I interviewed here, he checked it out and liked it, so we decided to share an apartment.”
“Then he’s the same age as you?”
“No, he’s younger.”
They were silent as Michael took the left exit onto the perimeter highway around Dunster. In the waning light the graffiti on the overpass was just legible, the cuneiform writing strange and exotic. ‘BISHOP ‘85’ ‘FORTUNATA’ ‘ROXY “N” ROY 4 EVA’
"Did you work somewhere before you came here?" he asked as he merged into traffic.
"Nope, fresh off the press."
“Justina, how old are you?”
“Why does my age bother you so much?”
He looked at her; her lips were pursed, trying not to smile. “Please don’t say you’re twenty-two.”
“Lookit, I like you, Michael. We’re going out because we want to.” He glanced back at the road, trying to keep his eyes on her, keep her focused on his question. “The fact that I’m twenty-five has nothing to do with anything.”
Is she kidding? The crimped smile was gone, she was looking at him simply. “Then the fact that I’m forty-four has nothing to do with anything, either.” He was not sure if he believed it.
“Right.”
All of a sudden Michael felt like a player pulled out of the game, all the way out, to the stands. He was just a spectator and he should be satisfied to let the game go on without him. He felt old. He told himself the feeling would pass. “I like you too,” he said, and smiled at her. “A Ph.D. at twenty-five! You must have really great discipline.”
She shrugged. “I was a mess as an undergrad,” and she told him about her switching majors five times, taking courses in practically every department at the University of Illinois before finally deciding on Romance languages, only to find herself interviewing for a job as an actuarial in an insurance company.
“Maybe they knew you didn’t have your heart in it,” said Michael.
“How could they know it if I didn’t?”
He pulled into the restaurant parking lot. “Because you have so many, many interests, especially in languages? Probably they hired the kid with only the math skill.”
“You think so?”
He got out and went round to her door. “You were over-qualified,” he said, opening her door. “Lucky thing, too.”
She tucked her hand under his arm and they walked into the restaurant. He hoped he had not seemed fatherly.
Michael did not like the first table they were shown, and helped the hostess find a better one. He sat across from her at the small table for two, watching her face as she talked, its contours lit by a globed candle between them. He learned she was an only child; that her parents had pushed her toward science, assuming she had inherited their predilection for discrete phenomena, the comfort of yes-no; that she had performed well for them, but without passion; that she had started college at seventeen, a year younger than is customary, and discovered a banquet of ideas at which right and wrong are holiday guests, put up with but not really wanted. She articulated to him, and to herself for the first time, her indifference to the fact that she could find no intrinsic importance in the study of French, or any foreign language, for that matter, except possibly as a tool for business. She admitted that what she did, her chosen career, was of no importance to anyone else, that it neither helped nor hindered them. The only importance she could find in her work was that she liked it, that it excited her imagination. And she guessed that occasionally, during her career, she would have students who felt this excitement, too, and she could help them deepen their passion. It sounded narcissistic, she said.
“Life is narcissistic,” said Michael, wishing he had not.
“Life is fill in the blank.” She felt like a puffball; she wished he would step on her.
“What a crock!” she exclaimed, while Michael said, “Why I am talking this bullshit?” But her pursuit of her passion in the face of her own awareness of its insignificance had registered with him. He thought her brave.
They did not want dessert after the large meal, so they ordered tea and coffee. Michael’s flirtatiousness had taken on a more tentative character, and was expressed in his eyes, his way of looking at her, now seductive, now simply friendly.
“You sure you don’t want dessert?” she asked as she saw him watch the wagon of cakes and pies go rolling by.
“I have all the sweetness I can stand,” he said, “right here.”
Her cheek was pink, it looked so soft; he kept himself from reaching to touch it.
His quick glance, and now his looking away. Had he given up on her? Did he think her too young?
“Well, I’m all talked out,” she said. “I’m tired of the sound of my own voice.” She sipped her tea.
He put down his coffee. “I’m sorry. I just really wanted to know all about you.”
“Tell me what you did before you came to Kennemac.”
He glanced at his watch. “I’ll have to tell you in the car.”
It was a short ride to the theatre, so Justina learned only that Michael had two older sisters, that his father owned a sugar cane plantation in Costa Rica and that his sister’s husbands helped his father run it. He had graduated from the Universidad de Costa Rica in San Pedro and gone straight to Juilliard. He had taken four years to get his master’s because he had worked his way through. Justina wanted to know what he had done afterward, while still in New York, but they had arrived at the little playhouse in Merrifield.
“What are we seeing?” They walked up to the old brick monstrosity, the town’s acknowledgement of art and their hope that artistic people would come there and give them some.
“Snow White.”
“The movie?” said Justina.
“No, the play.”
Michael retrieved his reserved tickets at the box office, they got their programs with the pages of well-wishes from moms and dads to the juvenile cast— “Fantastic job, Natalie! A star is born!”— and took their seats.
“I still want to hear all about your bohemian days in New York,” she whispered as the lights came dow
n.
“It was very predictable. You could guess most of it.” The pianist began the overture. “Keep your eyes open for the prince, at the end.”
“The prince?”
“One of my students. He has a killer aria, just before the kiss.”
They watched the children do Snow White, the girl lead touching in her adherence to her acting coach’s instruction, which unaccountably resulted in a terrific Betty Boop imitation. The dwarves were an audience pleaser, of course, particularly the littlest one, who got the best lines and the biggest laughs. At the intermission, the fidgety audience scampered down the aisles to the cookies in the lobby. Justina and Michael stood up to stretch their legs.
Michael nodded to the prince’s parents, who came over to him to hear his praise of their son. He delivered the expected honey, and they gushed over his sublime coaching. Michael introduced Justina to them, she marveled at how remarkably well the prince kept in character, how old was he? Really remarkable. The parents worried over the prince’s upcoming aria, Michael assured them that all would be well, and the parents finally went away.
“Do you go to lots of these?” Justina asked as the house lights flicked on and off.
“A few, now and then, when there’s someone I know. Isn’t it wonderful, all the energy of the kids? It’s as if they’re on Broadway, to them.”
The lights came down and the evil queen did her dastardly deed with the poisoned apple. Finally the prince came on for his big moment. He sang, and as he approached the dangerously high note, Michael, feeling suddenly on furlough, took Justina’s hand on her armrest and squeezed, and the note rang like a bell from the boy’s throat. The prince came gracefully down to safe vocal territory, and Michael smiled jubilantly to Justina. Glad for him, she found herself kissing his cheek. He looked at her happily, but felt yanked back into the rank again. He sneaked a kiss on her hand, and they watched the triumphant ten-year-old prince give a burlesque leer to the delighted audience, and then kiss Snow White. Michael and Justina watched the charming ending, their hearts quick with a separate excitement.
They were talkative on the short ride back to Justina’s apartment, going over the children’s performance in detail, avoiding the intimacy that waits in silences.
“That was incredibly cute,” said Justina.
“What a character,” said Michael.
“He made the most of his scene.”
“It was his moment. I’m glad fate smiled on him.”
Michael parked before her building and turned off the car. They did not move.
“I had a wonderful time,” she said, glancing at him, then looking at her lap.
“I did, too.”
She saw his question and felt a chill.
“I’ll walk you up,” he said.
They walked to her door in silence. Justina was afraid to let him in. Then she was cross with herself for coloring him a seducer. Or was it herself she was afraid of? She gave him a quick kiss, then looked at him to see the result.
The kiss acted on her like a drop of pupil dilating drug, and Michael saw in Justina’s eyes the longing that had been there all along. He heeded her intention and kissed her deeply. He saw her again as she had first appeared at the party, at once tentative and fearless, her body inviting a touch, her mind displaying sample after marvelous sample, looking for a response from him. He wanted to kiss her forever. They paused, “Justina!” sounding softly in his mind and then aloud, and he remembered to stop.
She trembled and sighed as he brought his hands to her waist. She would not look at him. He kissed her brow, her cheek. “Should I go?” he asked softly, knowing the answer, but ready to be surprised.
She peeked up to look in his eyes. “Goodnight,” she whispered, and kissed him one last time. She unlocked the door and stepped in; her smiling eyes were brimful of something, an ache, a pleasure, a whole with unnamable parts, and she closed the door.
He walked slowly back to his car, his joints gritty with resistance in sympathy with his craving heart.
Justina breathed a shallow sigh when she closed the door. She walked around the apartment, trying to get settled, putting away a few dishes, flipping through the mail on the counter, feeling inescapably aware of the warmth between her legs. She kept seeing his face, his face, his face, his thoughtful look at dinner, his happiness at the prince’s triumph, his riveting male resolve just now. She undressed and got into bed and tried to read, but the clitoral clamor would not quiesce. She gave in and tried, Michael’s face before her shut eyes, but after an exciting but fruitless half hour switched to a lover without a face. Was Michael too sexy? At the moment of climax his face reappeared and she praised him, over and over and over, and begged him to stay. She rolled over and fell asleep two hours later.
Chapter Eight
Complicated Princess
It was a Sunday without Charles. Michael would probably not cook that evening, no need to do any preparations. He had just a cup of coffee, he did not feel like eating. When the acid bothered his stomach he went ahead and toasted a bagel. The stack of compositions atop his piano had grown, but they could wait. They could always wait. He skimmed the paper, not savoring the review of the Boston Lyric Opera’s season opener. He waited till ten o’clock, then decided to wait another hour to keep from waking the roommate. At eleven he called Justina.
Kim answered, sounding groggy, looked around and reported that Justina was not in; she was probably downstairs doing some laundry. He’d tell her he’d called. He paced around, in a state of imminent phone call readiness, looking for something to do. He had already done everything, yesterday, preparing for the famous “my place or yours?” that nobody ever ends up saying. He sat at the piano and took down a composition, and imagined himself sitting home all day only to have her call back at ten that night, when the phone rang.
“Hello? ... Justina!” He settled onto the couch. “How are you?” They cooed to each other, about last night, what they were doing at that very second, like an intrinsically boring but anchoring bass line, and over it all a melody without words expressing how much they wanted to see other.
“What are you doing today?” prompted Justina, hinting there was only one possible answer.
“Well, I’ll tell you what I’m not going to do, I’m not going to see Charles.”
“Poor Charles.”
He smiled. “What are you doing?”
“You didn’t answer my question.”
“Oh,” said Michael, feeling the melody’s poignancy, “I’m going to come over there.”
“You are?”
“Mm-hm, and I’m going to get you—”
“Yeah?”
“And take you—”
“Uh-oh.”
“Apple-picking.” She was delighted with this idea, they set a time and hung up after several aborted attempts at “‘Bye.”
The orchard was crowded with families eager to celebrate the beauty of the day. They would exclaim to each other on the drive back to Boston what a wonderful day they had had, how the apples had tasted so wonderful fresh off the tree and wouldn’t it be great to live there. And they would schlep the bags of apples up the stairs, pack as many as they could into the refrigerator, put the rest out on the porch if they had one, or else in the pantry, and there they would stay until the spring, too dried up for even the birds to bother with.
The Delicious were not yet ready, so Michael and Justina entered the throng collected around the Macintosh and Cortland trees. The branches were pretty picked over, so Michael climbed up to get at the top ones. One of the orchard’s internal “cops” slapped him with an admonition to descend, the trees are too delicate for climbing, so he climbed down, jumping the last few feet to impress his girl, and when the “cop” went away, Justina scolded him, too.
“Are we arguing, now?” he asked, his eyes and lips lifted in a smile.
“No.” She pretended to be irritated. “I’m chastising you. It’s different.
“Oh.” His face
fell. “Let me know when we’re arguing.”
They walked down the aisle, some kids scampered past them, knocking over their bag.
“It’s so crowded!” said Justina, retrieving the apples. “Worse than the mall.”
He suggested they go across the street. There were jonagolds there, jonagolds weren’t as popular. Justina agreed.
“On second thoughts, let’s stay here,” said Michael, inexplicably.
“Why?”
“Do you want to go across the street?”
“Yes.”
“Well, I don’t,” he said, and crossed his arms.
“Why not?”
“I like to be bumped.” A huge man walked by holding two enormous bags of apples and knocked Michael off-balance.
“Come on, nimrod,” said Justina and she started for the road.
“Okay, but I’m angry with you.”
She looked over her shoulder at him as he followed her, not knowing what to make of him. They crossed the road and entered a grove of smaller trees, tied to a trellis and made to bear fruit while still very young.
She picked a couple of jonagolds and brought them to him to put in the bag. “Here, isn’t this better?”
“No.” Michael went deeper into the trellis and she followed him. “I really think we need to make up.”
She smiled. “Oh, I see, and how do we do that?”
He put down the bag. “First, you come here.” She stepped closer to him. “Closer. Okay. Then, I say, ‘I’m sorry.’ I’m sorry.” He waited, then prompted her, “You say, ‘I’m sorry.’”
“I’m sorry.”
“That’s okay.” They kissed, easier this time, with less apprehension of what might follow. “There. We just had our first argument,” he murmured.
“I don’t know if that counts, I was never really angry with you.”
“Oh, well, I was furious with you. I was mad enough for both of us, so— But you can be mad next time.”
She told him he was cute, and how did he know there’d be a next time? And she took his hands off her and went to one of the juvenile trees. She plucked an apple from a skinny branch, its salmon blush promising a juicy flesh beneath.