Licorice

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Licorice Page 16

by Abby Frucht


  Ben has a bull neck, but when, carefully, I’ve peeled back the sheet from the pillow next to mine, I find a neck so smooth and so well-made that for a minute I just lie there admiring it, and trace with my eyes its ascent behind the ear where the flesh is untouched, hairless and tender, until in contemplation I nearly place my finger on that ear and slide it down past the lobe to that vulnerable spot. But then he wakes and flips over, half-sitting up, and I can see how the pony tail was wrapped under his shoulder and I can see how shocked he is to find my hand so close to touching him, no more than an inch from his face.

  He smells of croissants. How could I not have noticed?

  For a second we lie there like that, and then he lies back on the pillow and blinks up at me.

  “Sorry,” he says finally, just a little sarcastic. “I know what you’re thinking. I didn’t do this on purpose, you know.”

  At once I believe him, because Daniel never lies.

  “Guess who’s up there,” he says, and points in the direction of our bedroom.

  “Who?”

  “Gail. She’s wired; you probably shouldn’t go up there till morning.”

  With that he gazes at me for some time while reaching slowly for one of my earrings: concentric hoops of brass, bronze, silver, and copper. He plays with the four hoops gently until I’m aware of our bodies. His own is taut beneath the sheets, poised midsignal. Mine just seems to be dissolving. Daniel purses moist lips, then opens them just inches from one of my nipples til I reach out a hand, like a mime’s hand designating a wall between us.

  Daniel stops.

  I think you need to take stock of your body, I remember Emily saying the last time I didn’t see her, on that evening we didn’t sit together on the bench. There was a little laughter, an exuberant shake of her cheerleader head, a whiff of perfume. What scent was that? I can hardly remember, it’s been so long since I haven’t smelled it.

  Jasmine.

  Emily said, The other day I saw a bed that had been loaded into a moving van. The back of the van was open. The bed was on castors. It was neatly made, the pillows plumped, the pillowcases smoothed, one corner of the blanket folded back. I lay down on it. I needed to. I didn’t have a choice.

  Then what, I asked.

  Then I waited, says Emily now, tonight.

  For what?

  I didn’t know, says Emily. That was the point. It was the waiting that was necessary. The anticipation that I needed more than anything. The desire for something to happen, more than the thing itself. So I lay in the van until-

  Daniel sighs, hovering.

  Until what? I ask Emily, but there’s no answer and besides, as usual she has made her point perfectly well, and my body is in perfect sympathy. In sympathy it balances on the apex of desire not wanting to be fulfilled, like someone standing on the ledge of a building, unable to jump or to climb back in.

  “Don‘t touch me,” I whisper to Daniel, so at last he retreats and lies back on the pillow, closing his eyes.

  “Seems like I wouldn’t mind knowing what seems to be going on,” he offers.

  His way of asking, Do you love me, or not?

  If I could, I would answer, but how can I know? What is the litmus test? What experiment could prove that I do, or don’t? And how irrelevant the question, I suddenly decide, knowing Daniel and me. We‘re two halves of one soul, remember? Asking me if I love him is like asking, Do you love yourself? What does it matter? We live with ourselves. We make do with ourselves. We celebrate ourselves. But love? What kind of problem is that? Who needs to know?

  I do, I think.

  IN THE MORNING I go upstairs to get us both some clothes. It’s just eight o’clock, and Gail is curled under the sheets so I can’t see a bit of her. She’s got the pillows in there, too, along with a bathtowel whose corner has flopped to the floor. In the bathroom I find a small Japanese print of an erotic nature, hung on the wall under glass, so I suppose that means Gail plans to stick around for a while.

  At nine, the bed looks exactly the same, but at ten, one leg has uncovered itself, the foot just teasing the edge of the mattress, the sheet twisted underneath it.

  By eleven, that leg has resubmerged, but one arm has pulled free of the wings of the sheet; the whole thing reminds me of Leda and the Swan.

  “Her nape is still caught in his bill,” I say to Daniel when I’ve tiptoed back down, and then I tell him what I’ve seen, the most amazing thing, a man’s signet ring that literally slipped off her finger while I watched, centimeter by centimeter.

  “I caught it before it hit the floor,” I tell him proudly, and then, showing it to him, I see that it’s not a signet but a scarab carved from amber. Inside, trapped bubbles. “Finders keepers,” I say, so Daniel hunts for a roll of masking tape, wraps a few inches around the band and, with impossible delicacy, so that our hands don’t quite touch, slides it onto my middle finger.

  At noon I can make out a pillow and Gail’s familiar soft afro, the same limp, corkscrew tendrils, but with a faint, ashy rinse to complement the tint of her eyeglasses, which lie open on the windowsill above. By now the whole room smells strongly of sleep, and walking into it I feel my eyes begin to close. When I’ve steadied myself on the doorjamb to yawn, I’m surprised to hear an answer from the folds of the sheets-another yawn, more protracted, far more murmurous than mine.

  “Dazzy sucka ma below,” says the yawn, concluding with a pleasurable sigh.

  “Gail?” I say, but there is only a crazy flopping under the sheets and then stillness.

  At one o’clock, after lunch, all the sheets have been tossed to the floor and Gail lies on her belly in restless sleep, in a nightgown concocted of bridal veils. How like a mermaid she looks, but very nearly out of water, the whole length of her body twitching and flopping as if trying to fall back in.

  By the time I leave for work, her frantic breathing has subsided and the smell of sleep has drifted downstairs into the hallway.

  I call Daniel from the post office before beginning my route. “Out like a light,” he says. And a bit later from a pay phone along the way. “Still nothing,” he says. “What’s new in the rest of the world?”

  “All of King Street is gone,” I tell him.

  “King Street?” Daniel doesn’t have a good ear for names.

  “That little court off College Street. You know, four houses, where Mike and Angela used to live except that now their house is moving, too.”

  “Meaning what?”

  “Meaning, they’re digging it up. They’re moving it.”

  “Who is?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Where to?”

  “I don’t know. Daniel, stop being such a scientist. Bring Stevie down to watch. They’ve got half the foundation uncovered already. I didn’t know they still did these things these days. There’s a backhoe, and a couple of people standing around with pickaxes. Tell Stevie to bring his shovel.”

  “Where is it?” says Daniel.

  “On King Street, I said.”

  “No. The shovel.”

  “Upstairs.”

  “I’d hate to wake her,” says Daniel, but he pedals past my route just a short while later, with Stevie strapped in the bike seat waving his purple shovel, looking innocent and glad. At once I begin to regret; suppose the idea of a moving house is too strange for the grasp of a toddler. Or worse, suppose it seems normal? Suppose he begins to expect it? And suppose, already, that the sight of two people carrying a couch, a table, a bed, across a lawn from house to van is no more surprising to Stevie than, say, the sight, to me at his age, of someone carting bags of groceries up from the car? Suppose that. Suppose he’s used to it already. Suppose the sight, so familiar, of someone dismantling their home, is actually a comfort to him, a sign of the ordinariness of domestic life?

  But still there’s the mail to deliver, and today it’s quite wonderful, really, a box of perishables for someone on Hollywood Street. Hollywood Street, like King, turns out to be no longer t
here. Gone absolutely except for the sidewalks and a few curved front walkways leading into stubble. In the box are some Toll House cookies and a loaf of banana bread, a little stale, but Stevie will love it.

  Walking home, later, I am eager to give it to him, and then to sit down and talk to Gail. I plan to ask about her sex life, and after that we’ll just talk, about her sex life, probably, and after that I’ll cook dinner and she’ll tell me about some of the men she’s been fucking.

  Inside the house the smell of sleep has dissipated, and the moist summer air has drifted in to replace it. Upstairs there’s no Gail, no eyeglasses open on the windowsill, no overnight bag, and no Japanese print, even, under glass in the bathroom.

  It is six o’clock.

  The bed has been made just as Daniel would have made it, meticulously, the shape of each pillow distinct beneath the sharp folds of the spread. The bedroom curtains have been drawn the way we like them.

  My heart is beating very fast as I walk downstairs.

  But she is not in the guest room, either.

  Not even her diaphragm, which she’d left behind on her last visit and which I’d stored in a canister of cornstarch on a shelf in the downstairs bathroom, is where I’d left it; there is only the faintest sprinkling of cornstarch on the floor.

  Stevie and Daniel, back from their King Street excursion, are in the yard digging plastic Monopoly houses out of the sandbox, then loading them onto the rig of a Tonka. They’re shirtless, and they’ve discovered the banana bread where I’d left it in the kitchen. The cookies, too. Stevie eats his with milk from a 50 ml beaker, drop by drop.

  A puff of cornstarch, I think, That’s what’s left of her, and go outside to tell Daniel, and nearly trip over Gail’s long legs. She is sitting on the porch swing, not swinging, her suitcase wedged under her heels.

  “Hey Liz,” she says.

  “Hi Gail. Where’s the Japanese print?”

  “In my suitcase. I can’t hang around. Bad Vibes. Bad Vibes.” She is wearing the tinted eyeglasses, so I can’t tell if underneath them her eyes are still green. She wears a paisley mini-skirt and a skin-tone top with a mock turtleneck and no sleeves. Her hair is a halo, backlit by new dusk. It’s getting later much earlier than usual, I note, and then think how well-rested she looks after the quintessential beauty sleep. Even her suitcase, carelessly closed, a fold of bunched satin showing at the clasp, appears rested. Bad vibes? What is she talking about? Her missing amber ring? Embarrassed, not wanting to give it up just yet, I slide my hand into my pocket. Still, I can’t stand the thought of her leaving, now, before we’ve had a chance to talk. I want to hear about the penises again: the big ones, the small ones, the middle-aged ones, the Moroccan ones, the French ones, the good ones, even the bad ones. I want to hear how they climb all over her the second she takes off her sunglasses. I want all the details. I want to know how she knows, when she meets them, which one she’s going to end up with, first, and how long does she like to anticipate, and where does she take them to do it, and what are the complications, and what are the delights, and are there some she remembers and others she forgets, and do some of them talk in the middle of it and what kinds of things do they say? I want to know if it’s usually morning or evening and if they eat breakfast or dinner before or after, and what are their names, their jobs, their physical descriptions, aspirations, failures, flaws, and shoe styles?

  “I’ve always liked to think I could tell whether a man was comfortable with himself or generally uptight by looking at the kinds of shoes he wears,” I suggest.

  “No way,” says Gail, leaning back on the swing, pushing off a little with her feet. “You know,” she continues, “your teeth are black. What have you been doing? Chewing tobacco?”

  “No,” I say. “It’s licorice. What kind of bad vibes?”

  “Like insomnia,” Gail says. “Like, no sandman. Can’t relax.”

  I break into a grin. “That’s funny, Gail.”

  She frowns. “It really screws up my system not getting any rest. I planned to do the whole number, you know? I needed it.”

  The whole number, I reflect. Tossing, turning, swooning, the whole bit. It occurs to me she’s skipped a day, that’s all. She thinks it’s morning.

  “What time is it, Gail?”

  “Breakfast time. I want some OJ, please.”

  “Gail. It’s evening. Dinnertime. You’ve been sleeping all day. Upstairs. You slept the day away.”

  She looks shocked. “With who?”

  “With nobody, as far as I could tell.”

  “Shit.”

  She really does take off her sunglasses now, and with her thumb and ring finger squeezes the bridge of her nose. Then she shakes her whole head, wet dog style. I can’t believe how beautiful her arms are. Shapely as legs, and I’m still thinking this when Daniel, with Stevie on his shoulders, walks past and gives me one of his “I know you” looks. Which is more than the usual “I know you” look coming from the usual person. From Daniel it’s rare, he gives it only to me, and it means, So, more licorice, but I’m still glad I know you the way I do. If I wasn’t married to you I’d have no one to talk about. Later on, can you help me with this paper I’m writing? and only lately, a sort of addendum, I don’t know why you don’t want to touch me, but I’d like you to know how incredibly patient I’m being.

  “I know how patient you’re being,” I say out loud as the kitchen door bangs. And how careful, I think tenderly.

  “Patient about what?” asks Gail.

  “Never mind.”

  Gail shrugs, then pulls her bare knees up to her chin and sets the heels of her sandals against the slats of the swing. Her lace panties are of a feathery, leafy design like the pattern made by frost on a window pane. The sight of it – the ferny delicacy of the fabric pulled smooth above the shadows of her body-remind me at once of Arnie.

  At once I feel guilty for not having thought of him all this time. The other day he saw me on my route and called down to me from the branches of a sycamore.

  “Oh, Mailma’m!” he called.

  I looked up and saw a streamer of peeled bark spiraling toward me.

  “How are you?” I asked, when I’d caught it, and got a glimpse of him hiding behind the silvery green of the tree trunk.

  “I’m dying,” he said.

  I looked harder among the flat, mitten shapes of the leaves. “How are you really?” I asked.

  “Really?” said Arnie. “Wasting away,” and he was as serious as he was playful, I knew, because I saw how his suit vest flapped above his ribs where the hands of the sycamore leaves reached in. I want this and that and this, they tapped out on his chest. I want Gail and Gail and Gail.

  “I think there’s someone I should take you to see,” I tell Gail. “Someone in love with you.

  “I doubt that,” says Gail, who is absently kissing her own knees, her moist lips opening and closing as they travel the clefts and rises. “Anyway I think it’s better when they have a chance to think about it.”

  “He’s thought about it,” I say. How frail Arnie looked the other day in the tree, so that I thought of a sparrow again, wrapped in a dishtowel in a cardboard box, its heart trembling under ratty feathers, a drop of liquid clinging to the point of its beak, unswallowed.

  “Then you agree?” asks Gail.

  “With what?”

  “That it’s better when they have a chance to think about it, and especially if they’ve noticed you with somebody else, or if you happen to have been with one of their friends…. The thing is, if they get too into thinking about it beforehand it can backfire, if you know what I mean, sort of a mess all over the place. Every so often you get someone who can’t bring himself to admit that’s what happened, or they get so embarrassed–”

  “Gail–” I interrupt.

  “which puts me on edge, because it makes me feel maternal. I don’t like to feel maternal when I’m—”

  “Gail–”

  “What?”

  “Gail
, I think we should talk about Arnie. I think we should pay him a call. He really misses you, you know. He’s in love with you. It hurts him, Gail, that you left so suddenly, and that you haven’t written him, and that you haven’t come to see him.”

  “I haven’t written him? Who?”

  “Arnie. You know, the Tree Man. The one you stayed with in my guest room last time around. The one with the feathery hair.”

  “What about him?” she asks, testing again. It’s clear she’s not accustomed to things like this-some man missing her, hurting, wanting her to come back. She needs to hear it again, so I tell her. Now she’s kissing her arms. I have to lift her by the elbow to get her to stop, and after poking my head in the kitchen to tell Daniel I’ll be back in a while, we climb down the steps to the sidewalk. Across the road, still grouped on the curb lawn, is that same row of ladder-back chairs, a suitable audience for Gail’s happy confusion. Their dumb applause fills the air as I lead her up the street.

  THE HOUSES on Edgemeer are bigger, their side lawns wider, their fancy lawn chairs set in clusters around wheeled tea tables. Grackles perch on the arms of the chairs, and on the limbs of the pruned fruit trees, but there is only the sound of Gail’s disheveled suitcase bumping against her hip. It gives her walk an extra sway. How at home she appears with this notion of travel, scouting the too-empty streets. My route rarely takes me to Edgemeer, so I don’t know which of these fancy, abandoned houses belongs to Amie’s parents. Quite a few of them have studio garages, and one has a true carriage house, white with red trim and its own little forlorn garden.

 

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