by Amy Lapwing
He smiled. “I suppose it’s only the alcohol. How long ago did you divorce from your husband?” he said to change the subject.
She told him it was two months ago, that they had been addicts and she had cleaned up her act, two years ago, now, and he had not, he thought he could handle it. She realized she had to give up on him, that she could not help him and that he would probably drag her down again. “Anyway, I don’t go in for being a martyr, so, ‘Hasta la vista, baby!’”
“Are you glad to do it?”
“It’s such a relief! You know, once I decided. You know, I’m going to leave, fuck him! I’m leaving and I’m going to live my life! I want to be happy, I deserve to be happy. Once I did that, it was: okay, this is so easy! I’m thinking, why didn’t I do this a long time ago?”
“But it took you years to decide?”
“Yeah. Stupid.”
“Yeah.”
“Oh!”
“No! I know what you mean. It’s difficult to give up,” he explained.
“You feel like you should be doing something, you know, trying to make it better.” She slipped off her shoes, slowly and carefully, as though she did not wish him to notice.
“And you do try,” he said. He imagined she had tried more than her husband had.
“It’s never enough for some people.” Her sprightly persona returned as she said, “Wasn’t meant to be, life goes on!” She took a sip of her water.
“Come here,” said Michael, patting the couch seat next to him.
She smiled, biting her lower lip and raising her eyebrows, and sat next to him.
“You’re pretty,” he said and kissed her. She responded unreservedly, belting out a rousing kiss. He enjoyed it, her exuberance.
“I guess you’re feeling more awake,” she said, and they looked at each other a moment, sexually revolved, with few inhibitions and no taboos.
“I like you, Helena.”
“I like you too. What’s not to like?”
There was an eagerness in her look, and also a holding back, expressed somewhere in her brow, he thought. He could smooth it away if he said and did the right things. His eyes moved down her neck to her shoulder and stuck for a brief moment on the mole on her collarbone before moving down to her breasts, the brown spotted crowns plumping above the top of her dress, to her round hips and full thighs and ending upon her large toes in the bone sandals, the nails painted fuchsia. He looked into her eyes again. Convincing her would not be difficult, as long as he acknowledged her hesitation and then reassured her. He said, “I should be going.”
“No, don’t go. Stay a little longer.”
He caressed her cheek. “You’re nice.” He stood up. She went to her door with him, the big silver Mary Richards-style ‘H’ on the wall startling him. “Thanks for the evening,” he said.
“I had fun.” She kissed him again. “Don’t lose my number, okay?”
“Okay.”
He took a long way home, following the left fork into Merrifield instead of staying right for Kennemac, and went down past the high school and a quarter of the way around the traffic circle and onto Main Street and pulled into the parking lot of Justina’s building. He looked up at her living room window. It was lit. She was still up. Or maybe just Kim. He's a good guy, Kim. He kept watching the window; there was no movement behind the curtains with the lace trim. He rolled down the car window to air out the perfumed interior. The last lucky crickets chirped praises to the fine Indian summer night. He imagined she was sitting on the couch reading one of her novels, or making notes for a paper. The golden square of light seemed to smile at him. He was sure that was what she was doing. He could imagine himself sitting in a chair near her, boning up on Mozart or Verdi or reading through a score, trying not to hum or tap so as not to disturb her. She would look up and smile at him when his puckish humming would break through. The golden window was melting him; he could picture it so easily. She could not, apparently. What is wrong with her? Does she lack something? But she was not heartless, he had seen how she worked with her students. Is it the distance that allows her to be so good? Is closeness the killer for her? But they had never been awkward together, it had always been easy to be together, until she decided it was too good. Until he had to push her about staying. He had been impatient. He had thought four months was long enough to wait for her, but he must have been wrong.
He looked out at the few cars passing in the street. He would not have to wait for Helena, he knew. He could have stayed with her tonight, she would not have minded, she would have enjoyed it, she enjoyed everything. Justina talked in bed; Helena would be loud, he could probably ring an orgasm out of her. He guessed Helena was what guys called a screamer. She’s a good kid, I like her. He looked up again at the window.
Chapter Twenty-four
Close It Like a Book
Justina had gotten back from the James fiasco a little after nine and found a message from her mother on the answering machine. She called back and spoke just fifteen minutes or so, saying little, asking short questions in a high, quiet voice. She said goodbye to her mother and hung up the phone.
Daddy has cancer, he might die.
She walked distractedly into the kitchen and got down a mug for tea.
He must be so scared.
She thought of mortality and how we all had it, but her father had a worse case of it, suddenly, after a doctor’s phone call. She wondered how he was taking it, really. She knew he was trying to focus on all the possible treatments, and he would be reading up on the disease. He would keep his mind occupied, but how could he completely stifle the fear? She wanted to hug him, but she did not know if that would make him feel worse.
Stupid! How can a hug make you feel worse? What’s wrong with me, don’t I understand anything about people? How could I lead James on that way? I wasn’t surprised when he said he loved me. How could I sit there and not say anything after he said that? My father has cancer. I’ll go home, just to see him; it’s not melodramatic, it’s natural.
She forgot about her tea and called an airline and bought a ticket, to leave the next day and return midweek. It was very expensive, but what the hell? She sat staring at her hand-lettered “Life awaits you, seize it!” sign and felt far away from the girl who had written it, in love with everyone and everything, off on her own in France. She went into her room and folded clothes to put into her suitcase. All was ready for departure tomorrow at mid-morning, she should go to bed. She went into the kitchen and made that cup of tea and sat on the living room couch. She did not want to play music, she did not want the emotion. She sat back on the pillows and read a Balzac novel, he was an easy read, she would not need a dictionary.
It was normally fun to read Balzac’s descriptions of rooms, but tonight she skimmed those in favor of the dialogue, to keep the story going. The sound of a car’s motor outside in the parking lot that cut off but was not followed by the sound of a door opening registered somewhere in her brain, but she did not investigate. Daddy’s sick, Mom has to take care of him. They have a huge project ahead of them that they will hate. James loves me and I could care less. And Michael is shunning me like a diseased person. She rested her hands on the paperback and wept, her legs and arms trembling, her abdomen aching from squeezing out the sobs. An engine started up and the car drove away.
Mavis and George met their daughter at the little airport in College Grove on Sunday just after twelve-thirty. Justina squeezed her father hard when she hugged him; he smiled extra-broadly to cover the extra emotion he was feeling. They all three walked arm-in-arm, George taking Justina’s bag, as usual. She started to object but then let him, not wanting to call attention to his jeopardized health. The overbearing airplane fumes bullied them out of the airport to get on with going home, like so many homecomings before, the three of them happy to be together. In the car she took her usual position in the back and sat silent while George negotiated their release from the parking lot. She studied the back of her father’s head an
d his one-quarter profile when he looked to the side. His neck skin was looser than she had ever noticed, it pulled his ears down. His eyelids sagged, but the effect enhanced his handsomeness, she thought. The whites of his eyes were yellowing, that was his one geriatric trait, otherwise his eyes were just as lively as she remembered. His hair seemed grayer and thinner. He would probably lose it in the next few months; perhaps it would grow back thicker. He was talking to her mother, Justina could not quite hear. He turned to her, a smile squeezing its way out of his eyes. “You haven’t had lunch, have you, Justy?”
She said no, and they decided to go have lunch downtown in that nice health food restaurant. She felt full of life and she did not want to talk about his illness, yet, so she told them about the characters she encountered during the summer at the Harvard library.
“There was this one little guy, we called him the Gnome. He came every Tuesday and Thursday and put his jacket on the same chair at the same table, he carried a jacket just for that, it was summer! Then he went up and down the periodicals shelves and picked out a bunch of journals, all these different ones, and took them back to his table. He opened them all out and spread them out on the table and then he took notes, we assumed, he was writing, anyway, in this notebook. He’d read from one and then jump to another, and then go back to the first one, then go to another one, it was like he was trying to see if they contradicted each other.”
“They were all on the same topic?” asked her mother.
“I don’t think so, I don’t know how they could be. We watched him one time and he got an archaeology journal, an aerospace one, a theatre one, a computer one and a Gaelic one.”
“Maybe he was looking for articles on the same thing,” suggested George. “And if he ever did, that would really be something!”
“I don’t know, computer-aided lunar archaeology is very hot in Irish circles right now,” joked Justina.
“What about theatre?” said Mavis the accountant, keeping track.
“You could make a musical out of it,” said George, “an Irish paleontologist and a software engineer find love on the moon.”
“There you go!” said Justina.
They laughed, wanting to forget the illness and just be normal and have fun. “Who’s we?” asked Mavis.
“Hm?” said Justina.
“You said ‘we’ called him the Gnome.”
“Oh, that’s James. He went with me, he was researching a thesis topic.”
“Who’s James?” asked George.
“He was my graduate assistant. Now he’s— not. He’s Pascale’s T.A. now.” They ate their lunches and talked about how the Kanes were doing, and how Robin’s company was doing, and Justina told them how Kim was doing, he was between girlfriends, apparently. They strolled downtown afterwards and George bought Justina a new University of Illinois tee shirt at a gift shop. While Mavis looked in an antiques shop George told Justina about the treatment course they had decided on. He would start chemotherapy next week. They would decide after that if they would do radiation. She listened solemnly, treating the talk as an information-giving one, not a solicitation of sympathy.
“It’s going to be hard on Mom, Justy. I’d like it if you could call her, you know, just talk to her. She’s going to get sick of me and I think it’ll help her to have you to talk to.”
“Nobody’s going to get sick of you, Daddy,” she said, pushing down a sob.
“Well, just don’t forget about her. Okay?”
George took a nap when they got home. Mavis and Justina worked out in the yard, clipping the bushes and cleaning leaves out of the flower beds. Mavis brought an armful of juniper cuttings over to the wheelbarrow near Justina. “Are you seeing James now?”
“Groan,” said Justina. “Mother, why do you always know when I’m dating someone?”
“Because you tell me. You went all the way into Boston to use the library, and you bring someone along, often enough to have a people-watching game with him. So, either he’s just a good friend, or you’re dating him.”
“He was just a friend, then I started dating him. For some unknown reason.”
“You don’t like him?”
“I did like him. But now—” She bent to scoop up leaves with her rake and put them in the wheelbarrow. “I wish he’d just go away and leave me alone.”
Mavis helped her sweep up the remnants of the leaf pile. “You don’t seem to like having men around you.”
“I do too, just— I don’t know. Not James.”
“And not Michael.”
“It’s not the same.”
“What’s different?”
“I don’t love James.”
Patient, Mavis raked up the small leaf pieces and acorns and dumped them into the wheelbarrow.
Justina picked up the handles of the wheelbarrow and pushed it over to the driveway. She unloaded the leaves onto the tarp spread on the asphalt. She came back to where her mother was, raking a new pile of leaves. “Are you worried about Daddy?” she asked her mother.
“Justina,” said Mavis, raking, “we’re going to do all we can. But he may die. You need to understand that. There’s no guarantee any of this will work.”
“Is he scared, you think?”
Mavis started filling the empty wheelbarrow. Such tedium. Best not to look at all the work that remained to be done. “Of course he is.” Her husband was frightened of dying so soon and her daughter was frightened of her father being frightened. “He’s really glad you came home. I am too.”
Justina wiped away a tear and smiled at her mother. “Me too,” she said and turned back to her raking.
Tired after the unaccustomed labor, Justina went inside when they had done. She would just read a little before dinner. On her way to her bedroom she passed by her father asleep on the sofa, his Scientific American on the table beside him, his glasses neatly folded and placed on top, his hands folded on his chest, his still face making Justina think of him as dead, already. She went out of the room, glancing at him again and seeing the hair on his legs above his socks and thought about how she had once heard the hair and nails of a dead person continue to grow for some length of time. She laid down on her bed and felt sick to her stomach.
The soporific effect of visiting one’s parents became cloying by Tuesday night. She was glad she was going back home the next day. The flight left at two in the afternoon, a convenient hour for her parents to transport her and her bag back to the airport. The leave-taking went on too long, they had too little to say to each other and too big an interval to fill. They ended up repeating themselves or looking out at the few planes on the little airfield. “Be sure to take the car in for a check-up.” “Let us know when you’re coming for Christmas.” “You’ll be coming home for Thanksgiving, won’t you? It’s the Kanes’ turn this year.” “Let us know how your grant work is going.” “Keep me posted on things.” A woman’s voice finally announced Justina’s plane and she smiled sadly and hugged each of them. Her father clasped the back of her neck and kept his face close to hers and smiled, his way of saying, “I love you,” for as long as she could remember. She knew he would never look the same again and was relieved when he let her go. She got on her plane and waited for the excitement of travel adventure to come over her. The small plane felt shabby and make-shift. A headache developed that stayed with her the rest of the day. She arrived in Dunster two planes later and had to run to the terminal with her bag in the rain.
Thursday morning Pascale came in Justina’s office and sat across from her. “Where were you?” she demanded.
“Home,” Justina answered, surprised. “Didn’t Lucas tell you?”
“Tell me what? Of course he didn’t,” intoned Pascale. “Men don’t gossip.”
“It’s not gossip. It’s called informing my co-workers.”
“To him, it was probably ‘a personal matter.’”
“Quel dweeb.”
“So, what were you doing at home?” persisted Pascale. Justina told her ab
out her father’s illness. Pascale said she was sorry and next time to call her, she would be happy to help with her courses.
“I think the students would appreciate that,” said Justina, grateful. “I think I’ll be glad to see them today. They better be glad to see me.”
“It’s hard, isn’t it?” Pascale went around Justina’s desk, her arms spread wide. The two friends embraced.
“So, what did I miss around here?” asked Justina, wanting to get back to normal.
“Nothing.” Pascale’s eyes went wide when she remembered. “Oh, something! Something very— something!” She sat back down.
“What?”
“A thing by the name of Helena Somebody.” She told Justina that Michael had showed up at lunch on Monday with a tall blonde on his arm. An extra-mural blonde, with no conceivable reason to be on campus. “Except so you would see her, I’m sure,” Pascale concluded.
“Not a student?”
“She said she works at the grocery store. He said she’s a singer there, or something.”
“What?”
“I don't know. Anyway, she didn’t show up on Tuesday or Wednesday, so maybe that’s the end of it. We’ll see, hein?” Pascale realized from Justina’s disconcerted look that this was not a piece of gossip, but bad news. “Don’t worry, Justina. You’re much prettier than she.”
Justina looked at her friend, wondering what had sparked that comment.
“She’s really old,” Pascale went on, and went out, bound to return in an hour for the trek to lunch. “Hi, James,” she said as she went out.
James came in and closed Justina’s office door. He stood just inside the room, looking somber, making an effort to breathe calmly.
Justina could not look at him; she wished she could close him like a book and put him away for later, when she was in the mood.
“Hello, Justina.”
“Hi. Sit down.”
“No, Justina, I don’t want to stay here. I just want you to know you hurt me very much. I opened my heart to you and you acted like you didn’t notice. But you must have and you ran away, without a word, and I could only wonder what happened to you, and why you ever let me kiss you and why you let us go as far as we did when you didn’t mean it, you never meant it, you were only, I don’t know, you were playing with me, or something, but you were never really there, never really there for me, for me! You don’t even know who I am and you let me think you cared, so I let myself care and I told you so, I told you I loved you and you were going to make love to me but then you weirded out and just took off.” He stopped and took a few quick breaths until the last bit welling up in him spilled forth. “It was despicable, what you did, not just that you changed your mind about making love. If you’d just told me, James, I’m not ready, or, James, I don’t feel right, if you’d said anything, I would have said, fine, I would have understood. Because that’s how much I care about you.”