Emma Who Saved My Life

by Wilton Barnhardt

  He was not the best conversationalist in the world. He had a girlfriend, but once I took a look at her I didn’t feel envious. She wasn’t ugly (her name was Lucy), she was just bland like he was and they were bland together, sitting in our living room in front of his black-and-white set watching the entire evening’s fare, from 7 p.m. to the news, Lucy and Daniel hand in hand. Somewhere in the middle of the news, Daniel would look at Lucy and Lucy would look at Daniel and one of them would say, “Well, I guess I/you had better be getting back,” and then Daniel would accompany Lucy home on the subway to Long Island City, which was in Queens and therefore this was an hour-long process.

  I enjoyed his hour out of the house. I could call Lisa (now living on the Upper West Side, on the fringe of Harlem, in a run-down but interesting neighborhood) and I could call Emma, who had slept on Janet’s sofa for a month before moving in with one of Janet’s weirder friends, Jasmine, and they lived in Williamsburgh, Brooklyn, in a fifth-floor walk-up in a Puerto Rican neighborhood that from all reports was the bottom rung of New York housing. I thought, of course, I’d keep up with both of them frequently, but it was more like once a month. Everyone got very busy. Lisa had let her hair grow out and got a six-month stint at another marketing agency, she’d met this guy named Jim (surprise, surprise, a new boyfriend) and she was doing all right. Emma cut her hair (which I thought was a big fashion mistake), but Jasmine was real counterculture and druggy and was big into punk music and sang with this band on weekends and Emma was enjoying fitting in with that. Fine. Everyone has his or her life, I have mine.

  Except mine was a little bit more boring than theirs. Daniel set the pace, I’m afraid. His hour out of the house was a relief because we were always passing and bumping into one another there in that small place. New York City is often thought to be such a lonely city and there’s a lot to say on that subject, but there is much more to say on the subject that New York City is a city in which you can’t be alone, in which you’d pay to be alone, from the morning crowded subways, to the elevators up the skyscrapers, and the crowded offices and cubicles and bank lines and post-office lines and lunch-counter lines and movie lines and sheer rubbing shoulders with the eleven million who use Manhattan every day, what you wouldn’t give to be ALONE with no other people, to talk like a madman to yourself or sing with the radio or eat cereal from the box while you lie about the sofa with nothing on watching inexcusably bad TV, or whatever. Just ridding yourself of the throng for a little while. I had one hour, one measly hour.

  Daniel had been living there alone but he had needed more money when the rent went up and decided to put up an ad at the Venice and I answered it and there we were. It seemed like his place, and I never shook feeling like a guest—particularly as there was not drawer space for me and I used my suitcase as a clothes cabinet. Felt like a traveling salesman. We had a 1940s refrigerator which filled up in an instant (if we’d defrosted it we could have fit more in there, but …) and so I bought lots of cookies and dry foods and breads and ate a lot of hotdogs from the street vendors and never cooked anything for myself. Daniel would, however, cook for himself and sometimes for Lucy and they would sit in the living room and you’d hear the clink of forks on plates as they ate silently, bland food, bland people. They’d wash the dishes (it certainly was nice being away from the sink after the apartment with Emma and Lisa) and they’d make quiet sink-talk and then it was TV again. I am not this dull, I told myself with some frequency.

  One night Daniel asked how long I would be gone when I was going to see a movie and I said two hours or so, and then I figured out he wanted to sleep with Lucy in the apartment and I should disappear … so I said sure, I’ll stay out four hours, which I did. When you have to spend four hours doing nothing you are really aware of the time. I could kill four hours—bookstores, movies, diners, just sitting, having a coffee somewhere with the paper—by myself easy when I did it under my own volition, but that night just went on and on. Everywhere I went I was bored. Couples populated the world. I was feeling lonely and in need of companionship. Internal dialogue:

  Hey go to McKinley’s and see Monica and Tim and Donna and Crandell … Nah, they’re boring, you just saw them the other night, not to mention every day at lunch.

  Hey, go and see Lisa. Nah, she’s dating someone and if you just dropped in she’d be making love or something and, no, just no.

  Emma? Williamsburgh is years away and you’d have to hang out with Jasmine and her band friends and smoke drugs strong enough to kill you. (That was unfair, I’d only met her once—a real space case, she seemed.) I’m doing fine without Emma, anyway. I’m glad she cut her hair and looks uglier; she’s looking all anemic and run-down too. Well, maybe the analysts she’s going to will help. Any more social options?

  Go out and pick up a stranger and take them home. And do what? And go where? A disco? With spinning disco balls and neon and lighted floors and cheap Californian-looking sleaze-monsters wearing open shirts and medallions and white disco suits, dancing to vacuous music thump thump thump? Not my scene, man. This was the Golden Age of the Singles Bar and I was not part of it, me, in the prime of my youth.

  There were a lot of suggestions that never failed to play in my head and I never failed to reject them. Try to get back with Monica … naaaah. Ask out Catherine, the pretty new actress at work who flirted with you two months ago … naaaah. Get out Connie’s business card and call her at work and have lunch or dinner and pick up where you left off … naaaaah—wait a minute. Maybe Connie dropped out of sight because you didn’t pursue her. Could be, but then she always made all the aggressive, initiating moves. Yeah, it wasn’t my place to insist on seeing her—she was richer, classier … no those are dumb reasons for letting things fade. But where would I take her? A pizza stand, on my capital of $5 spree money?

  I kept thinking about it. Daniel and Lucy were watching cop shows in the living room, I was lying on my bed reading the same page of a book over and over. Call Connie. Do it boy. What if she turns me down, makes some kind of excuse, gee, she can’t make it this week … Well then at least you tried.

  So the next day I called down at Golam Brothers and after ten reconnections I dug her up in Bond Research. What was she doing there, I asked.

  “Dying, that’s what. A major career setback. Gil, I thought you weren’t at all interested in me—”

  Connie that was nonsense, I just couldn’t call you up, take you out on a date for a decent evening compared to—

  “What is this? Courtly love? The middle ages? Gil, guys don’t have to pick up the bill anymore. I’ll pick up the bill … oooh, something’s up, gotta go. Dinner my place on Friday? I’m a great cook—”

  Sure, sure—over in Jersey?

  “I’m on the East Side now, babe. Lexington and 85th,” and she gave me her address and apartment number. Eight o’clock.

  Well. And that was that.

  Night of the Big Date: I shower and wash everything there is to wash just in case. My nice jacket which is J. C. Penney’s and synthetic, but what can I do? Tie is not wide enough, stupid colors too—I only have two ties and one was stained. The collar of my white shirt is permanently gray, my socks have small holes in them and these shoes are unpolishable and worn out. Well the jeans were all right. I WAS INADEQUATE IN EVERY WAY. No, no, calm down—no pre-date panic. How old am I? Good god, twenty-fucking-five and here I am utterly inexperienced at dates. Does she expect me to stay over? Should I make a pass?

  Will I be late? No, too early. I walk around the block three times. I bought wine, two bottles of Liebfraumilch. That was baby sophomore-in-college wine, wasn’t it? Well it was five dollars a bottle which was a lot for me but I probably bought shit. Too late now. I rang the bell.

  Up the stairs, down the hall, knock on the door. Pause.

  Connie looked like one-hundred-thousand-million bucks. I was a pile of dung, but then we’ve gone over this ground before.

  “A little vermouth perhaps?” she said, sweeping through her apa
rtment, as I was escorted in and looked around. “Sit, sit…” It was a decorated apartment. I’d never been in a decorated New York apartment.

  Nice decorations, I said, as if her place were a Christmas tree—oh so very very clever, how DO I do it?

  “Did it myself, and spent the whole of this year’s salary already. But I want to entertain a lot. Like tonight. Vermouth with a twist of lime?”

  Sure.

  “Here you go,” she said, handing me the vermouth. I would have drunk drain unclogger if she had handed it to me. Come to think of it, my first vermouth, I think I was drinking drain unclogger.

  “Vermouths are in this year. Campari’s big in the cafes of Europe these days. Are you a Pernod fan?”

  Pernod. Opera composer? Impressionist? French poet? Sure, I said, hoping it didn’t taste like the vermouth.

  “Good, we can have some of that next.”

  News for Gil: it tastes worse than vermouth. But I drank that dutifully too.

  “An hors d’oeuvre?”

  Yes I was starved. (Don’t guess Connie has made peanut-butter crackers—a hunch tells me …)

  Connie runs to the kitchen, a sleek modern Kitchen of the ’70s, functional, full of amazing gadgets and food processors and tools. I haven’t been making eye contact with the hostess; I am shy and stupid things are coming forth from my mouth. But I take a chance to observe her here: hair longer than last time, great silk patterned dress and a stylish apron on around it … Why did she need an apron? Surely Connie never spills anything. She was messing with some sauce on the stovetop—what a graceful way to move, her wrist and the tinkling bracelets, she brings the spoon to her lips to sample the sauce … a pause, she judges, she winces, she grabs something from the spice rack and pours it into her palm, then taking a pinch sprinkles it into the pot. Deadly serious business this sauce. I thought under the impetus of vermouth and Pernod: pay that kind of attention TO ME.

  “Hmmm,” she said seriously.

  I decided to make jokes about my complete lack of class. If the sauce doesn’t work out, I said, we can just use ketchup.

  “Gee,” she said playing along, “ketchup on TV dinners? Is that done?”

  The dinner table was all set up—napkins finer than any single article of clothes I owned, plates featured in dishwashing detergent ads (I could see myself in them), flowers. The woman had flowers on the table. The plates matched the tablecloth design (cloth was beige, there was a brown fine stripe on the china); wineglasses and water glasses and several pieces of silverware. I did not deserve to eat there. While I am preoccupied with the dinner table I discover that Connie has been talking at me for a while about her career:

  “… and as we didn’t get along and he’s Chicago and I’m Harvard it was inevitable that I transfer out of that department. Well fine, but there’s nothing opening up. Bond Research was taking the best deal; I’ll get out of it after making my mark. I realized, in a way, that’s good, good being in the unglamour departments, because you can shine. Sales is thankless right? And yet in Sales, if you’re good, you have made money for the company—they’re not going to ignore that. Over in Investment you can bust your butt and no one knows who did what good thing, you never get credit for what you do. How’s the Venice?”

  Wake up Gil, your turn … Well I told her about my depressing little talk with Dewey Dennis, where he said I didn’t have a future there.

  “And you’re still there? You really need an agent. Have you auditioned anywhere yet?”

  Well uh, I will when I get some time off—

  “Take the time off. Tell Dennis what’s-his-name if he isn’t going to cast you, you need time to audition; and if he wants you to clear out, he’ll let you look for work on company time. Don’t be too conscientious here. Don’t let ’em take advantage of you.”

  The truth was I was lazy and scared. I didn’t confess this, though.

  Dinner was served.

  “You like the duck?”

  It was the World’s Best Duck.

  “Now you’re just saying that. Really?”

  You know it, Connie, and I know it—it was the World’s Best Duck.

  “You marinate it in this game consomḿe for three days—well, okay, I thought of it Wednesday, two days in this case. Then you baste it in Armagnac. The orange is squeezed freshly over it.”

  It was liquid duck, it fell apart on the palate, dissolved into an explosion of sensations, rare almost-tastes, suggestions, depths … Where’d she learn to cook like this? Her mother?

  “Ha. Mom was doing well to open a can of beans. I picked this up in France. I lived there two summers, in between Harvard. Paid for it myself—worth every penny.”

  France, huh?

  “I love France,” she went on, barely able to consume her food for all her elaborate hand gestures. “I belong there.” She nodded toward the posters around the room. “Those posters,” she said between bites, “they’re all from art galleries, special showings while I was in Paris. There’s only Paris and New York. Have you been to Europe?”

  No, but I wanted to go one day, I said. (Gee really? The Art of Conversation is dead tonight …)

  “French cuisine is the finest in the world. Italian is right behind it, but Italy’s hot, right? A bowl of pasta, a heavy Tuscan soup, then a main course—pow, you’re out for the afternoon, asleep in an hour, sluggish all day. You get up from a meal in Lyons”—she kissed her fingertips, Frenchlike—“filled, satisfied, enriched in every way. It’s perfectly geared to the climate, the life, which is what cuisine is about, isn’t it?”

  Yeah. Right.

  “There’s not a wine region in France where the cuisine isn’t tailored to the character of the wine…”

  And on and on she went while I sat there fascinated. This is the way to live, I said to myself, this is the way to be. Not “Oh my, all my problems, blah blah blah.” There was knowledge out there, knowledge about art, literature, cooking, travel, and some people gave their minds to it, and others sat around, whined and watched a lot of TV. Not mentioning any names here.

  “Oh I could go on all night about this,” she broke off. “Don’t get me onto the subject of France. I’m uncorkable. Speaking of that—would you do the honors?” She cocked an eye toward my second bottle of wine (I bet I bought shit wine; I bet she knew it was shit and was just being nice; I felt inadequate for the 500th time that evening). I got the corkscrew and tried as suavely as possible to open it—please Connie, keep talking, don’t watch me foul this up …

  “I like the French attitudes about sex and male-female relationships. We’re so off the track in the United States. This equality thing.”

  SHE of all people, not a feminist?

  “No not at all. Mind you, I’ll get everything I want. I don’t have much in common with most women anyway, in that I never would get in a position where a man could stop me from doing what I wanted to do no matter what age I was born in. You act like you’re subservient and you get treated that way.”

  Yeah, I said, devil’s advocate (me the big feminist here, ha ha), and I said that in Paris, say, of the last century she would have had to be a courtesan to gain power, money, influence.

  “I know, I know—that’da made things a lot simpler for poor Connie, huh? I’d have killed to live back then. Oh Gil, you tool a man around for a month, you get a necklace; a year, opera tickets and great dinner; two years, a flat—and for what? Putting out for a Frenchman. Now that was what I call a deal. Connie’s on Wall Street, she knows a good deal when she hears one. Of course, today, sex with men is out, a good feminist is a lesbian these days, if you read what the leaders say.”

  I wonder what Janet and Connie would say to each other. Would there be bloodshed? Would they understand each other?

  “Most feminists who take this hard-line, political lesbianism stuff couldn’t get laid if they had to,” Connie continued.

  Bloodshed.

  “All the things women traditionally are good at, have done for centuries�
��courtesans, mothers, raising the children, high priestesses, you name it—that’s out now. The object is to go out into the business world and be as shallow and stupid and conniving and empty as your male counterpart, dress like a nun, sue the company for fifty million if someone pinches your behind at the water cooler, no sex, no femaleness, no fun.” She sighed. “I hate all the actors now,” she said, changing tacks.

  WHAT?

  Connie smiled, blushed a little for letting her thought slip out like that. “No, no, not you, I mean film actors. All the sensitive and caring and sharing and supportive men of the ’70s, men who cry, men who share in the child rearing, men who give up their careers for their wives’ careers. No thank you. I don’t like that at all.” She pointed her fork at me, raising an eyebrow. “I don’t trust it. I don’t believe it. When men stop acting like bastards something’s up. I can deal with a man acting like a typical man, I can outthink him, predict him. I can’t deal with the Mr. Sensitives, the ’70s househusbands on Donahue—no way. And I’m so sick of gay men in this town, give me a break from that too.”

  Lot of gays in the theater, I say, not exactly making headlines ’round the world with that observation.

  “Yeah well, put ’em all in one place so they can meet each other and not get Connie all hot and bothered for nothing. I hate the ’70s.” She took a sip of wine, then sneered: “No style, no class, no flair. This city’s idea of a good time is dressing up in polyester and dancing to noise. This, supposedly, qualifies as fashion.”

  Yeah, but the decade’s been pretty peaceful. As someone who missed being eligible for Vietnam, let me tell you how much I appreciate that.

  “Carter,” she went on, rolling her eyes. “President Jimmy Carter—what a joke. That guy’s gonna let the Shah fall because that one-term governor from white-trash land, that peanut farmer has had it occur to him that some people in the world aren’t very nice sometimes.”

  Could be worse, I said. Governor Reagan, Moral Majority in tow, is waiting in the wings.

  “Whadya mean worse? Worse than Carter addressing the nation in his jeans and sweaters? Worse than Rosalyn and her expensive-and-still-tacky pantsuits? You know, maybe as a neighbor in the building here, I wouldn’t mind him, but as a president?” She smiled at me, sensing we were not aligned politically. But she minced no words: “I voted for Reagan in the primary and I was prepared to hang with Gerald Ford, but Carter getting elected is something I still can’t believe. Mencken said the only thing to come out of Georgia worth a damn was Coca-Cola and I think he may have been right.”