Otherwise Engaged: A Novel (Vintage Contemporaries)

by Suzanne Finnamore

“Hey,” he said.

  “What are you doing?” I asked.

  There is a long pause, uncharacteristic of him. He would usually have said, Just sitting here on my ass. Or, Making coleslaw. He does not say either of those things. He lets a little silence well up between us, and then he says, “I’ve been sick. Actually, I just had my spleen removed.”

  “Why?” I ask. Doom is creeping up my backbone. Dusty is gay, middle-aged.

  “Well, I might as well drop the bomb. Are you sitting down?”

  “Yes.” Why do people always ask if you’re sitting down? I think.

  “OK.” Big irritated sigh. “I’ve been HIV positive since 1989.”

  “Oh.” The horrible urge to laugh comes over me, as it always does with shock. On the other end of the line I hear Mary Beth, the Christian QVC host, demonstrating folding silk tote bags from Indonesia.

  “I’m so sorry you have to go through this,” I say. I am speaking from somewhere above myself. “I love you,” I say. I think it is the first time I have ever said it. Then I ask, “Do you need anything?”

  Like a new spleen? I think. I am an idiot. Why God doesn’t want me to rush home.

  “Have you told Ray?” I ask.

  Ray is Dusty’s best friend.

  “I can’t,” he said, with the dead-set finality of a Texan. I cain’t.

  When I climbed in bed last night, Michael was already asleep. He smelled like hazelnuts.

  I don’t tell him about Dusty. Telling him would legitimize something I am not willing to legitimize.

  Besides, Dusty’s doctors have told him he’s going to be around for a long time.

  But they lie.

  • • •

  Dusty is the only person I know who still uses butter. He fries chicken in a deep cast-iron skillet. I stopped by one day and found him alone, making a double batch of peach tarts, with fresh peaches. He had rolled the dough from scratch and was piling the tarts, warm, onto tiered servers. We both ate four.

  Before he moved to Manhattan from San Francisco in 1990, he once carried a black iron candelabra to my door, unannounced, then walked briskly in, attached it with picture-frame wire, and wrapped a red paisley scarf around the base. And left, screaming away in his orange truck with the gold wheel spokes.

  He always wears a white baseball cap, the dirtier the better. He has worn his hair Marine short since before it was the fashion. He rarely shaves but has never had a beard or mustache. He has a permanent stubble, flecked with gray.

  He is the worst gossip I have ever known, but has never to my knowledge hurt anyone, man or woman or animal.

  He says “fuck” more than anyone I know, somehow making it sound funny each time. In his mouth the word “cool” becomes two syllables. Coo-ull.

  Unsatisfied with the words available to most people, he frequently makes up his own words, many of which can be used as a verb or an adjective or a standard of measure. Whump, glunk, gronk.

  “You just fuckin’ glunk a whole bunch of it on there, and then bake it.”

  As a chef his measurements are quixotic, known only to him and performed by eye. A recipe has to be done in his presence to be effectively transferred. I have his recipes for roasted mustard turnips, cabbage and rice soup, and corn fritters made with Jiffy mix.

  I realize as I write this that I am cataloging. I am storing up what is his.

  I call Dusty again.

  He sounds bad. We talk about nothing. Nothing is simplest to talk about, once the reaper has you in his sights.

  Right before we hung up, he told me a story. He told me that as a young man, he had always said he didn’t want to live past fifty. He had sworn not to get old, and had specified the age.

  “Fifty and that’s it,” Dusty said. “I used to say that.”

  He laughed ruefully, as though he had bet on a wrong horse.

  Dusty is forty-nine and a half.

  Ray phoned this afternoon. I was in bed with a head cold.

  “Hedo?”

  “Dusty’s taken a turn for the worse,” he said. “It’s Ray,” he added, as an afterthought.

  “Where are you?” I said.

  “I’m at his place.” He sounded elaborately casual, as though it hadn’t required an airplane. Despite everything, I feel glad that they are together, that Dusty has told him.

  “Don’t worry about coming out here right away,” Ray said. “It’s not like he’s going to die or anything,”

  “OK,” I said.

  I hung up and dialed United.

  “Where are you going?” Michael asked.

  “Dusty’s dying,” I said.

  As I pulled up in the cab I sensed something up there, crouched over his apartment building. Waiting.

  Walking down the driveway, gravel crunched beneath my rubber sandals. This is one of the sounds of summer, I thought. One of the sounds he will never hear again. I began to cry.

  Later, I thought. Not now. Now you smile. You act like this is not happening.

  He lay in bed propped on pillows, wrapped in an Indian blanket, surrounded by his friends and his art, which was crammed into every available nook. Tall brightly painted carved figures, embracing in pairs, some of them carrying their own head. Some with their hands clamped over their mouths.

  Everyone he knew was either there or on their way. Or they didn’t know.

  In less than three months he’d lost half his body weight. His hair was mostly gone, smattering his head in spiky gray patches. His head was wrong, lopsided. He looked like the Scarecrow in The Wizard of Oz after the flying monkeys had gotten to him. Slumped over, shocked.

  And we rush around trying to fit the stuffing back in.

  He kept attempting to sit up. He’d succeed for a minute or two and then he’d lie back down.

  I held his hand. His hands had shrunk to baby hands, puckered at the wrist. His liver had failed; he had no spleen. The virus had him.

  I would have prayed, if I’d felt there was something up there other than that fucking chariot.

  But instead I prayed for the chariot.

  Dusty had insisted on coming home from the hospital, I find out. So Ray arranged for hospice, which we are all part of, for the time that we are in town. It’s a clipboard. A sign-up sheet, like for a school ski trip. Hospice. It sounds like such a nice word. It sounds like it has nothing to do with death.

  He is on an experimental drug to flush toxins out of his liver, plus prescription marijuana, and painkillers. Even awake he looks asleep. Every so often he’ll laugh, a weary chuckle slower than it should be. Each laugh seems a triumph against something.

  When he falls into a shallow sleep, we silently file out onto his small roof garden.

  Ray squints into the sun, smoking a Camel. His hair, I notice, is now all the color of steel. I realize it has been years since I’ve seen him.

  “When did you start smoking?” I ask.

  “This weekend,” he says.

  I wonder if he is lying, if he has been sneaking smokes all his life. He looks to me now as though he has always smoked, has always had gray hair.

  We water Dusty’s tomatoes in terra-cotta pots. The plants are bending with fruit. As we pick the overripe ones, the ones that can’t wait any longer, Ray looks out at the trees in Gramercy Park, as though I am not there.

  “He could live another year,” he says. This is not true. We both nod slowly.

  • • •

  This afternoon Ray, ex–star quarterback for the Oakland High class of ’76, is in charge of changing Dusty’s diapers. Six foot three inches, two hundred and twenty pounds, he crashed around the tiny cluttered apartment, speaking in a loud, boisterous voice about what an asshole Dusty is for having so many cookies in his cupboard. Naming them out loud, like poetry.

  “Pinwheels. Mallomars. Chips Ahoy. Flaky Flix.”

  Yvonne and Lana both call and talk to Dusty for a minute, and then to Ray and me, asking questions.

  Ray is wearing Bermuda shorts, a Dallas Cowboys tee shirt,
and paper-thin red zori sandals. He spends the day bringing Dusty his mug of Diet Dr Pepper, the only thing he ever drinks. Holding a Merit cigarette to Dusty’s lips. Giving him his medicine, helping him shuffle to the bathroom.

  It is probably the most beautiful thing I have ever seen.

  After about five hours, I leave and go back to my hotel. I make it a point not to say good-bye.

  Ray found Dusty at one point trying to take a shower. He had somehow managed to remove all his clothes. His naked body stood next to the hot-water spigot, which had been turned off when he was in the hospital.

  So Ray called the water company, which turned it on, and then Ray gave him a shower.

  I think about the loved ones bathing their dead along the banks of the Ganges. I think of, not so long ago, his newborn body washed clean of its birth sac.

  • • •

  Last night I went again, for the last time.

  I made him laugh, once. It felt like lifting a car over my head. A miracle.

  At dawn, Ray flew back to Texas, to his wife and two young sons.

  After he left, Dusty refused to take any more drugs.

  We are on our way to see Michael’s daughter, Phoebe, in Vermont. I am meeting Michael there, flying in from New York.

  Michael said I could cancel and meet Phoebe some other time, but I feel committed. Although it doesn’t seem real, this trip. I feel as though I am standing in for someone, a regular type fiancée without a care in the world. Someone younger and more vibrant, whose friends aren’t in liver failure.

  Met Phoebe last night and went to dinner.

  Michael and I stood in the silk wallpapered foyer of Grace’s home. The ceilings were twenty feet high. The drapes were a deep, warm gold; they pulled everything together, I could see that. Grace hands Michael Phoebe’s backpack.

  “I love your house,” I say.

  She says nothing. Attractive, she smiles. Of course she’s attractive.

  “It’s really nice to finally meet you,” I say.

  She does not say, It’s nice to meet you, too.

  “So,” she says. A two-letter sentence. Skillful.

  I decide not to make small talk after all. People are dying.

  We take Phoebe and leave.

  As Michael and Phoebe and I walk toward the rental car I have an urge to double back and crouch under an open window, to hear Grace critique me. I am almost eager for it. If I get caught, I reason with myself, I can always say I dropped an earring or I’m admiring her garden. The part under the window.

  I can always tell her the truth, which is that I have never matured.

  Phoebe is a bright adolescent who says “It’s OK” about everything.

  Do you like your steak?

  “It’s OK.”

  How did you feel about the movie?

  “It’s OK.”

  What do you think of female genital mutilation?

  “It’s OK.”

  I don’t feel what I think I’m supposed to be feeling about Phoebe. I feel indifferent. She’s not making me love her.

  I call Lana and she is definite.

  “No,” she says. “You won’t feel anything. Neither will she. Maybe in a long time, something. Maybe.”

  I do like the way she giggles. It’s more of a snort, really.

  For the first time it occurs to me, no matter how honorary the title, I am going to be a stepmother. Sending the innocent children out to the dark forest, on the pretext of gathering wood. Instructing the hunter to remove the small, still beating heart, so that I might reign supreme in Michael’s affections. The usual.

  • • •

  Ray called from Dallas today.

  “Dusty died,” he says. His voice sounds strange, as though some industrial accident has occurred, and now he, Ray, is flat.

  He explains the circumstances of Dusty’s death as if reading from a card. Every sentence or two he stops, and all I hear is his breath as he crushes back tears, which are coming inexplicably from somewhere inside the flatness.

  This is what happened.

  Dusty was in bed, with his sister Rhonda and her husband and Jim Bentley gathered around in chairs nearby. Bentley, who was Ray’s college roommate, was telling a joke, when Dusty started to cough. The hospice nurse cleared the room. And then he died, choking on his own blood.

  “Remind me not to invite Bentley to any more parties,” Ray says before he hangs up.

  I haven’t cried. Because he’s not gone. If he were gone, I would know it.

  In Vermont, Phoebe and Michael and I go roller-skating at a rink. There is a group of incredibly beautiful young black girls from a local Salvation Army summer camp, skating happily. They go around and around, like stars.

  I can’t stop thinking about Dusty. Trying to absorb the fact of his death, which seems even more unbelievable because I wasn’t there, and because these small girls are screaming with glee and so obviously complete.

  What I feel is a need to know he’s all right. I’ve asked for a sign.

  • • •

  Michael and I went horseback riding with Phoebe on the world’s oldest living horses this afternoon, and then spent the rest of the day at the small, quiet hotel pool.

  Our air conditioner, which the hotel management says is brand-new, keeps shutting itself off. The men have come to fix it twice, shaking their heads and adjusting their caps on their heads. They don’t understand what’s wrong.

  Perhaps this is the sign. Or it could be incompetence. I will know later, will request another sign. The first one wasn’t strong enough.

  Lunch with Michael’s ex-wife. She served grilled ono and white Bordeaux on the veranda of her spacious home.

  There is something intrinsically terrible about ex-wives. Their faces hoard knowledge. Yet at bone level I know she’s had the worst of it. Michael has said he wasn’t ready to be married at thirty-one, and I believe him. Second wives have the edges filed for them. Through the first marriage and the conflagration of the divorce, the men are pre-hobbled.

  We played a little game, Grace and I. Each time I said something, she made no response. This, I saw early on, would be the sport. To see who could reveal the least to the other. Yet we had revealed everything by choosing the same man. I, of course, would lose. She knew that, which is why she had chosen the game. Michael would never have married a stupid woman.

  It grew so quiet, and I was so obviously losing, having said several dozen words to her six or seven, that I found myself talking about Dusty. I mentioned that my friend the artist had died and how I was able to buy, over the phone at the very last minute, one of his sculptures before the executors came to cart everything away.

  I said, “I wonder what it looks like.”

  Grace fiddled absently with her watchband, tightening it one notch.

  “I bought it sight unseen,” I said.

  And she said nothing; she just looked up from her fine timepiece and blinked at me, as though trying to remember who I was.

  Then her dogwood centerpiece toppled over and spilled all the wine. There was no wind, it just fell. I laughed. She ran for towels.

  Dusty?

  It is our last day here.

  I was drying my hair this morning, using the hotel’s hair dryer, as I have every day. With a loud crack! the electrical outlet short-circuited. When I unplugged the cord, the prongs were black.

  He’s out there. Free.

  Weeping, I sat on the bed, with its awful pink-and-orange hotel bedspread.

  I will never see him again. I repeat this fact, to cross the river.

  They spread his ashes yesterday, back in Matador, Texas.

  I could have flown standby, but I chose to stay here with Michael and Phoebe. It’s Michael’s birthday. We have Thai food, at his daughter’s favorite restaurant. Pad Thai noodles with a candle, stealthily arranged by Phoebe.

  When Michael blows out the candle, I think of Dusty. I experience a wave of guilt. Clearly I have failed him, not being there for the ceremony.


  Then I hear him. Smoking a cigarette, exhaling with a long chuckling sigh.

  “Fuck it, darlin’.”

  Always generous, he left his voice in my head.

  When I get home, my mom wants to know all about Grace. I tell her how the first thing Grace mentioned to me, at our lunch, is how she met Camille Paglia and they had cocktails together. She had gone to see her read from her new book and had tickets to a private reception afterward at Gotham, where she had the fortune to be seated across from her. It’s like Grace opened my head and chose the one thing I would really, really like to do, and then revealed she had already done it. Amazing. A gift, really. I can see why Michael loved her.

  This morning I wake up sad about Dusty. I ask Michael to bring in his sculpture, so I can hold it as I lie in bed. He does.

  I ask Michael, “Why Dusty? Why couldn’t it be someone I don’t like, or wouldn’t miss.”

  I have several people in mind.

  Michael says that he thinks there’s a plan, a reason why this happened, one we don’t get to know. He doesn’t think it’s any worse than being born, dying.

  He says that Dusty is just going back to the place he was before he was born. He says this and watches my face for improvement. At times like this it becomes absolutely clear to me that I can do without anything but Michael. He is the linchpin. This is the best and worst news I have ever received: I am once more eligible for loss.

  Michael says, “They shouldn’t call it death, it’s bad PR. They should call it Stage B.”

  I hold him, so he doesn’t get away.

  I decided I am definitely keeping my name. I’m not even hyphenating. I feel extremely territorial, almost suspicious. As though there were someone trying to rub me out.

  “Only you can rub you out,” Reuben says. “You are the villain and the heroine, and you’re everyone in the audience.”

  “Who is Michael?” I ask.

  “He’s your costar,” Reuben says. Then he reconsiders.

  “Who Michael is, is none of your business.”

  I called Ray today, to see how he was doing.