by Abby Frucht
“Sometimes I wander about you,” I joke, but Danka just scowls and sticks out her thumb. No sooner does she do this then Joe’s car appears. It slows nearly to a stop, but there’s room for neither one of us. On the back seat are both big containers of water and in the passenger seat sits Eva, one elbow propped daintily on the armrest, her eyelashes fluttering.
“Sorry,” says Joe, and smiles his crooked smile before stepping on the gas.
PART FOUR
The Top Hat in the Kitchen
EMILY CALLED,” shouts Daniel as I walk in the door.
The two words – their soft syllables – have the intonation of a song, so for a moment I think he is playing a game with Stevie. But Stevie’s by himself in the study, on the floor before the computer, gazing dreamily at the blank and luminous screen. When I ask what he’s doing he pulls himself up, presses the space bar and sits back down. What a silly question, this gesture seems to say. What do you mean, what am I doing? I’m contemplating.
I find my husband in the kitchen hunched over the balance, shirtless, his hair shiny moist from the shower. Even from the doorway he smells mintily of soap, and I can see the wet sheen on his back and arms. He has velvety skin and a flawless, comforting shape, untouched by me since the Doberman pinscher affair. Thirty-one days. I wouldn’t know offhand how much time has elapsed except that Daniel, in his way, has been keeping me informed, marking each passing day on our wall calendar with a tiny, careful drawing of a hand. It is my hand, I know, because on its middle finger is the ring that fell off Gail’s finger, and he knows that I know it. He tested me. On Thursday last week, the drawing was missing.
“Where’s my hand?” I inquired at dinner.
Daniel squinted at my forearms, pointed with his fork, went back to his escargot. We’d found them packaged with their shells at the Epicurean, and sautéed them in garlic and butter. Dessert was a tinned fruitcake, the closest we could come to what we both really craved – Sara Lee.
“Where is it?” I insisted.
No reply, and I knew that he was after an admission of sorts.
“Where’s the picture of my hand,” I asked carefully, “that you draw on the calendar every day?”
No answer.
“Where’s the picture of my hand that you draw on the calendar every day that we don’t touch each other?”
Still nothing.
“Where’s the picture of my hand that you draw on the calendar every day that I don’t touch you?” I tried.
Daniel sucked at his snail, grimaced, nibbled a fleck of garlic.
“Where’s the picture of my hand that you draw on the calendar every day that I don’t touch you and that I don’t let you touch me?” I asked at last.
“I forgot,” said Daniel. He slid the half-eaten snail back into its shell, got up, sketched a drawing of the hand on the calendar, added Gail’s ring, and sat back down.
Tonight I very nearly do it. Touch him, I mean. My hand reaches for his hip, but at the last second steers itself through the opening of his pocket and pulls out a couple of jewelweed fruits. Each is marked with a colored embroidery thread, like a gift-wrapped, miniature pea pod. He collected these himself. It’s been a while since I’ve gone with him into the field although we still talk about my going, with a tone reminiscent of the way we used to anticipate sex – flirtatiously, at once jokingly, seriously, gratefully. I pick a jewelweed fruit open with my thumbnail, peel the two halves apart, gaze at the nestled seeds. One seed is plump, but the others are shriveled.
“What out-crossing distance was this?” I ask.
Daniel glances at the thread.
“Third nearest neighbor,” he answers. “They don’t seem to be selfing, so far, and the best yet is first nearest neighbor.”
He says this with emphasis, happily convinced of its absolute rightness. Daniel hates plants that self, that is, plants that mate with themselves, but he is happiest with flowers that mate close to home. He finds them reassuring. Tenderly he slits open a fruit, removes a seed with a tweezer, places it onto the scale. He always loves what he’s doing, no matter what it is, even weighing jewelweed seeds. He likes modest pursuits, incremental gains, so long as each small quantity of new understanding further bridges the gap between humans and flowers, humans and bees, humans and natural law. Still, he takes umbrage at Ben for having gone so far as to name his woodchucks. Yesterday, Mamie and Chevy came back, both limping, both bruised, both caked here and there with patches of blood, but Red is still gone. “From the face of the earth,” Ben said to Daniel, gloomily, while feeding Marnie and Chevy spoonfuls of rat chow. Then he fitted them with collars, part of his new radio tracking system. Each collar had been threaded with a transmitter and with a slender, concealed antenna.
“So, what do you think?” I ask Daniel.
Meaning, is Ben going too far? Is Ben all right? Lately, every night when Ben comes over for dinner, he brings a handful of photographs of trips he has taken with Leah; to the Maine seacoast, to New Mexico, to a bog where they once hiked in West Virginia where cranberries grew. We pass the photos around as we eat, then lay them in a fan on the center of the table, to be studied and admired. There is always one of Leah by herself, on a sand dune, in a crater, at the prow of a boat, squinting casually into Ben’s camera.
“I think he’s keeping himself sane,” Daniel says resolutely, switching off the balance and going into the hallway to check on Stevie. From the study he calls out again, “Emily called,” and this time I hear it exactly.
Emily called.
Calmly I walk to the telephone, stand in the half moon curve of the desk, and dial her number.
Nothing happens. The phone is dead.
I pull the cord from the jack, slip it back in, do the same thing again with the bedroom phone and fall asleep holding the silent receiver.
NOT UNTIL NOON the next day at the post office do I learn that the local phone system has been entirely shut down. Two days later the radio station closes as well, and on the fourth day the local newspaper publisher holds a party in the middle of the square, a gala farewell with big kegs of iced tea, trays of homebaked cookies and a couple of untalented, limping clowns who must have slashed their feet swimming in the reservoir. One wears striped, one-piece swim trunks but the other wears a bodice of pearl-studded lace with a satin applique of a butterfly. Each butterfly wing very nearly conceals a breast. It’s Gail, in white face with exaggerated eyelashes and brows. Gail’s suitcase, wide open in an oblong of sunlight, is crammed with clown make-up and props and Gail’s diaphragm case where everyone can look at it. Gail hasn’t noticed me, yet. She is juggling pieces of fruit, just two, an apple and an orange, and not very well, and when the second clown throws her a banana, it hits her in the stomach and thuds on the ground. I make a lunge for the banana, thinking how much I’d like to have it, not for me and not for Daniel, but for Stevie, who hasn’t had a taste of potassium in months, but just as I reach it, Arnie Junior swoops out of the tree, squawks, scoops the banana into his beak and flies it over to a crook in the tree where with great flourish he drops it into the upturned top hat. Then he lifts the top hat by the rim and carries it to Gail, who with equal flourish reaches in and pulls out-what?-the same banana. The crowd titters. Gail throws the banana to me, and, undeterred, beckons a third clown out of the tree. It’s Arnie, of course, in sequined tails and his usual naked feet. He tweaks the wing of Gail’s butterfly and then his own rubber nose. A stream of water squirts out, missing Gail’s face by an inch or two. The crowd titters again but gets quiet when Arnie pulls a handkerchief as if out of nowhere and lets it drop gently over his fist. With his free hand, he recites an incantation, then holds the cloaked fist toward Gail who whips the handkerchief away. Underneath is Amie’s fist, the same as before. Even when he opens it, spreading his fingers, nothing falls out. Gail sighs while the third clown, the one in the swimsuit, kicks at the edge of the suitcase.
“I thought you practiced,” I whisper to Gail, who has picked up the
apple and is juggling again. She takes a bite of the apple and mugs for the tiny crowd.
“Who says we didn’t?” says Gail under her breath, still grinning. “Who says this isn’t how it was supposed to turn out?”
Then she kisses the apple and tosses it over my head. In white face, with her lower lashes painted halfway down her cheeks, she looks fundamentally changed. She looks happy, her giant eyes glittering. She makes a gesture toward Arnie, then slides a hand down the front of his pants and pulls out a purple balloon.
THIS MORNING I had a dream about Danka and Joe.
They were rolling around in the potting shed, having trouble with the zipper of Danka’s little black dress. They had trouble as well with her brassiere and garters, and Joe never took off his cap, which in the end slid off his head onto Danka’s closed eyes. Afterwards, Danka made one of her soups, with turnips, potato peels, cigarette ash, and whatever was left of Ben’s favorite woodchuck, Red. From the bottom of the pot, from underneath the steam and simmer, Red’s shrill peeps rose and floated free of the pot, but Danka didn’t notice, she was too busy looking at Joe, thinking of how when he got sick of having her around, he’d tie her to one of the Asiatic magnolias in the old arboretum and walk away from her forever.
For most of the dream, I was sleeping, for some of it, I was awake. Anxiously I tugged on the sheets, until Daniel woke and asked what I was doing.
“Dream,” I said.
“About what?”
“About Emily,” I lied, for no reason at all that I could think of. On my tongue I tasted Danka’s cigarette ash, bitter and dry.
“What about Emily?”
I didn’t answer. I went back to sleep. But after breakfast, Danial said, “Why don’t you go visit her, talk for a while, tell her how you’re feeling?”
“I might.”
“You might what?”
“Go over there,” I answered.
“You won’t,” said Daniel.
Reverse psychology is one of Daniel’s specialties. It works every time. He pulled himself to his elbows and gave me a challenging look. I met it by walking out of the house, past the row of empty card chairs and down Forest Street, toward Emily’s.
NOT UNTIL I’ve reached the corner do I realize what I’ve done.
How naked I feel, walking alone in my blue jeans, T-shirt and sandals. No oxfords, no regulation pleated shorts and button-down blouse, no mailbag, no mail, no backpack, no stroller.
No Stevie.
How empty-handed. How free.
This could be it, I am thinking. I could be leaving, going away, not coming back.
For a moment I pause, and consider turning around. If I just turned my head I would make out the side of our house in the distance, the porch in the sunlight, the porch swing motionlessly hanging.
But I don’t turn my head. Instead I give it a shake to feel the comfortable swing of my earrings, and then I start walking again, one foot in front of the other, filled with nervous embarrassment and a palpitating dread. I’m just taking a walk, I say to myself as if I were talking to Daniel. Don’t worry, I’d say. Don’t get so worked up. It’s nothing. Just a visit to Emily’s. Emily will counsel me. Emily will tell me what to do. Emily will tell me how to come home.
Emily lives in one of those sections of town that for some reason my mail routes only rarely intersect and that I never end up visiting otherwise, these days. Off the state road on the opposite side of campus, on Hazelnut Street, her house is not far from the building that Daniel and I first lived in when we came into town, in a neighborhood of ill-cared-for college rental apartments. On that edge of town the perfume is not nearly so dense as it is near the reservoirs in this unusual August, when the blossoms at last have vanished but the crab apples hang rotting and sweet in the trees. Every night now it pours, but by morning just several more pulps have been knocked from the branches. By dusk, they’ve been tunneled by ants. Near where Emily lives, there is only the sharp smell of soil, and no wonder, because so many of the houses have been demolished, their dug-out foundations filled up with dirt. It’s the college, saving money on their useless properties. We know all about it, of course, but still I’m surprised by the sight of our own first apartment building so absolutely vanished; not a sliver of filthy windowpane remaining and the dirt-walled cellar not yet refilled with soil, its steep drop-off guarded by posts tied with flagging. At the bottom, some weeds have already shot up, and there’s a clump of pigeon feathers. How pitiful it looks, not ghostly at all but just a hole in the ground; I feel a twinge in my throat just to think of our old, naked light bulbs. For a while I stand around and kick here and there in the grass until my toe hits something-a piece of roofing shingle that I pick up and slide around in the palm of my hand before dropping it dispiritedly several blocks past. It could be someone else’s roof, it could be Emily’s roof. What if Emily’s house has been demolished, too? At the corner of Hazelnut Street is a U-Haul, so I make a dash for it not wanting it to take off before I have a chance to say goodbye. We need to finish our conversation, Emily and I. Where were we? A moving van, I recall, and she was lying on a bed inside of it, waiting for something to happen.
For what? I asked.
That was irrelevant, Emily insisted. She said the waiting was the point. The desire for something to happen, she said to me, more than the thing itself. So I lay in the van until—
Until what? I demanded, and demand again while standing uncertainly, at the rear of the open U-Haul, looking in. No bed to lie down on in this one, and no chair to sit in. Just some stacks of cardboard boxes and a potted acacia tree. The acacia is sickly and so fragile that one sneeze might strip it completely. Even the thorns appear insecure; when I poke one with a finger, it crumples accordion-style.
Until I’d had enough, says Emily. Until I felt bloated with waiting. Until I was only desire. Only. Nothing but. I hadn’t reached a peak. I was the peak itself.
I nod, confused, looking her over. She doesn’t look like the peak of desire. She looks like fulfillment. She looks like Emily. She’s all color coordinated: white socks, lavender sneakers, white T-shirt, purple earrings, white shorts with purple suspenders. On the T-shirt has been silkscreened, in black, a bold Chinese character.
And then what? I ask.
No answer.
No Emily, of course, because the U-Haul isn’t hers. Her acacia, if she owned one, would be sturdy, not dying, and the packing tape fastening her crates would be more neatly-more symmetrically–applied.
Emily’s house is farther down the block on the opposite corner. Approaching it, I know I’ve been in it before. It’s Gail’s old house from Gail’s Underground Railroad days, pale green with dark gingerbreading and that maze of subterranean hallways, abrupt stairways, and door after door after door.
Except that now it is painted not pale green, but white, and the trim a ripe plum, as if to better match Emily’s shorts and suspenders.
On the floor in the front hall lies all sorts of inexplicably, never-delivered mail-flyers, circulars, even ordinary letters-originally destined for places all over town. There’s the same row of mailboxes except for one new one that is Emily’s, shiny brass among a row of old tin, and there’s the same scuffed carpeting in the hallways and at each door except for Emily’s, which has a fresh welcome mat. I wipe my feet on it and knock, and am surprised to see it opened so quickly. Not by Emily, however, but by a man I recognize as her boyfriend, who in white jeans and a letter jacket is just the picture of a man who would fall in love with Emily. He looks like a jock. Behind him on tv is a tape of football bloopers.
“I’m Emily’s friend, Liz,” I tell him. “We haven’t met.”
“Liz!” he exclaims, and claps his hands on my shoulders and squeezes, hard, before saying, “But Emily just left. She went to your house to see you.”
“My house? You’re kidding.”
“Near the reservoir, right?”
“Walking or driving?”
“Roller-skating,” he te
lls me, frowning, not taking his hands from my shoulders. “Why don’t you sit down and wait?”
“She might be sitting down and waiting at my house,” I say.
“She might,” he agrees. “But I doubt it. New skates. She might be on her way home. You’ll pass on the road. Or she might take a spin around campus, first. She likes to skate around the track a couple times. You know Emily.”
He grins, his hands still at rest on my shoulders. On tv the crowd is cheering. For a minute we stand there like that, huddle-style, in silent agreement about Emily. Emily gliding through space. Emily’s skate wheels whirring and roaring. Emily in purple. Emily in plum. Emily spinning, dipping, swaying, turning.
“Bye,” I say.
“Bye,” he says, and releasing my shoulders, still grinning, goes back to his show.
I follow the hall to where some wind chimes are chiming, then climb down some back steps to the floor where Gail stayed for a while, with its shared bath, shared kitchen, shared wall phone. After that I get lost in a stairwell, open a door, end up in a boiler room, set off down another hallway, make a few odd turns, descend some steps to a kitchen that is not the shared kitchen but a différent one, turn back up the steps, take them too far, end up in an attic, push open a door and step into that sea of lost letters again, in the front hallway under the row of mailboxes.
How I happen to find it is a mystery to me although of course it’s the simplest thing in the world, how I reach in and take hold of an envelope and hold it up to the window for scrutiny.
How wind-blown it looks, and how terribly, terribly worn.
When I open the flap, a caterpillar drops out amid a shower of fine, dark sand, and the paper feels of tissue, softer than before, velvety and damp. There are blots everywhere, and smeared muddy caterpillar smudges throughout, the ink bleeding to watery pink, the message abbreviated, obscured, surrendered as if not to weeks but to years.