The Understory

by Pamela Erens

  Very early the next morning I returned to the Zen center, not knowing what time it opened, and stood reading the flyers taped to its door. Around nine-thirty a young woman with cropped hair and cat’s-eye glasses opened up and I followed her in. She hung her coat in a closet and I wondered if I could manage to slip into that closet after the final meditation of the evening, emerging to sleep on one of the sofas until daybreak. I would be safe here, I thought, even comfortable. I could wake up each morning in time to join the first sessions. All day I would meditate and attend classes, and when Patrick arrived, I would already be here.

  “Can I help you with something?” the woman asked, and when I could not remember what I needed help with she handed me a brochure. “Everything is in there,” she said.

  On a stoop across the street from the center I read the brochure and watched the door. Gradually people began to come and go. The back of the brochure described the Chelsea Zen Center’s parent center in Vermont, a place called Infinite Light Abbey, and showed an abstract swirl or pattern. I stared at this for so long that I began to see the pattern hover about me in the air. The brochure spoke of the abbey’s two-hundred-acre nature preserve in the Green Mountains, “an environment carefully constructed to promote study and introspection.” I read the schedule of classes and events over and over again, uncertain which appealed to me. Should I register for Calligraphy? Tea Ceremony? Introduction to Zen?

  My plan was simple. When Patrick arrived I would enter after him. I would sit at the back of the room, so as not to be seen, not to startle him, and I would watch and imitate his posture, his attitude of concentration. When the session was done I would go up to him and greet him. I have been wanting to give you something, I would say. I would take the book out of my pocket, press it into his hands, and speak my few words. Do get past the unfamiliar diction, the excessive formality. Then I would walk away, to show both him and myself that I did not intend to be a nuisance, that I only wished to issue an invitation.

  The stream of people making their way to the center slowed. At eleven there was again a burst of activity for the calligraphy class, and at noon there was another meditation session. Despite having had nothing to eat all day, I did not leave my post. People went in and out of the building. I read and reread the brochure. Was Patrick more likely to take a pottery class or sign up for a lecture series? The third time that the policewoman making the rounds spotted me she gave me a probing look but passed on without speaking. The light faded and the air grew colder; the doors opened for the last meditation session of the day. At seven-fifteen, the woman with cropped hair locked up and left. I walked away, strangely buoyant. Patrick had not come today, but he would come another day. In the meantime I was near him, ready for him, sure of a glimpse before long. Computer screens in the darkened windows of townhouses exploded with fireworks of shapes and colors. I stopped at a coffee shop and ordered two hamburgers, two eggs, and two glasses of rice pudding. “My friend will be here shortly,” I explained to the waitress, whose face I did not want to look at too closely, for it would not be the face of Marion. Later, after the waitress said it was too bad my friend hadn’t shown up, I devoured the second burger and egg and glass of rice pudding and caught a subway home.

  At Key Food I asked for empty boxes and took away as many as I could carry. I lined them up on my living room floor and put socks and shirts in one, books in another. I had expected to go back to the supermarket for more boxes but saw that in short order everything I owned would be put away and accounted for. It was that simple, to pack up my life. I had always wished to live frugally, to keep encumbrances to a minimum, but I was startled by the compactness of my existence. I began to remove things from the boxes, putting books back into the bookcase, clothing back into the bedroom dresser.

  I fell asleep quickly and dreamed of a long black train passing through an empty nighttime countryside. The land was perfectly silent and still, but the train clattered and ground and spewed out vast plumes of black, stringy smoke. The smoke smelled horrible, and I knew that it came from something bad within the shuddering train. Eventually I came to understand that a body was being burned, that someone was trying to conceal a crime. I opened my eyes in the dark. I felt hot. I knew it wasn’t morning. There was, in fact, a noxious smell.

  There was also noise—a noise as of someone moving about the living room, pushing aside the drapes, dragging a chair across the floor. I put my ear to the door. It was warm, and I knew then what was happening. I knew it would not be a good idea to open the door. I went to the window and looked down to the concrete sidewalk with its one scraggly tree, calculating whether it was too high to jump. There was no phone in the bedroom. I grabbed my wallet and pushed the Tuckerman book under the waistband of my pajamas. Then I went back to the door, dropped to my knees, and opened it slowly.

  The flames were swaying and shivering up the window curtains, which gave off a rustling, spitting sound. It was very bright by the windows. A thin line of smoke curled upward from the carpet. I looked left, at my half-emptied bookcases, and then right, toward the kitchen, which was an obscure tapestry of smoke and light. I heard a popping sound, and with astonishing speed a bolt of flame shot across the ceiling.

  Keeping my head between my knees, I crawled across the hot carpet, trying not to hurry. The air was thick, alien. Hold on to the breath that’s already in you, I told myself, hold on to it until you get to the front door. Don’t breathe. But the trip was long and I had to take little sips of air that clogged my throat and burned my lungs. Finally my knee banged up against something hard. I reached up for the knob and then yanked my fingers back—hot. I fumbled my shirt over my head and onto my hand, wrenched the door open. Coolness and darkness now. Gasping, I stumbled down the stairs. The street was completely quiet. I limped, blowing on my seared fingers, until I reached a building that I knew had a doorman. The doorman called 911 and then pulled from his stand, as if they had been waiting just for me, a pair of beat-up leather slippers. I stood with the slippers and shirt in my hand, shivering, until the doorman said gently, looking at my bare feet, “Put those things on now. You must be freezing.”

  For a long time that evening I sat in a fire truck, a fireman’s spare coat spread across my lap, my fingers wrapped in gauze moistened with bacitracin, occasionally glancing up at the windows of my apartment. Once it became clear that the fire would not be put out quickly, once I heard one of the men shout that both the second and third floors were engulfed in flames, I found that I could not stay awake. I pounded my knees to fight off sleep and reminded myself that my home and all my possessions were being destroyed, but drowsiness pulled me under. Later a man stood over me, shaking me alert. His face was blackened and his mustache was caked with ice. “Bad luck,” he said. He searched my face and I wondered if he had been here the first time, if he suspected me of something. He told me, gesturing upward, that I couldn’t go back inside. Just then a large piece of glass detached itself from a window and fell, spinning in the air before shattering on the pavement. I wondered who would clean up the mess. An image came to me of Mrs. Fiore sweeping the hallways. The fireman asked if I had any money on me, any identification, any place to stay. I said yes to the first two, then no. “You’re going to need some help,” he told me. He opened a compartment in the door of the truck and pulled out a sheet of paper, a grainy photocopy, pointing out the numbers for the Emergency Assistance Unit, the Department of Homeless Services, the Red Cross. He told me that I might be entitled to free counseling. I sat holding the paper, not understanding. Finally the fireman put a hand on my shoulder. “All right,” he said. “It’s 3:00 AM. You come back to the station with us.”

  The truck drove without sirens, gliding like a big boat in the night. In the station there was a smell of sausages, frying eggs. I ate a breakfast, murmured thank-yous. I was shown to an empty cot but could not sleep; it was as if in the truck I had slept for weeks. I forced myself to imagine my furniture igniting, the big oak bookshelves falling off
the wall, the books on them crumbling into ash. I could not bring myself to care. It seemed as if I had already lost these things years ago. What it hurt me to think of was the shard of glass from Patrick’s shoe, the soiled little note in his handwriting, the photograph. Couldn’t I have grabbed these on my way out? I had already forgotten the circumstances under which I’d left, the fear and the crawling. I gazed out the window as the sun came up and the television played in the rec room and men shouting “Gin!” slapped cards upon a table.

  Thirteen

  Many of the bonsai have died. I have been too brutal; some of the older plants I should have left alone. I should have realized that they could not withstand such drastic alteration. When the bonsai die, they die quickly, their crowns turning brown overnight and their trunks going gray and chalky. But perhaps there was no way to predict, because some of the trees I thought were the most damaged, the least malleable, have survived the ordeal of replanting, their leaves greening and their branches developing swelling nodules that will bear leaves. I am stricken about the others and cannot bring myself to dump them unceremoniously in the same bin where I put the clippings and other debris. Instead I dig a large hole behind the shed and line it with the dead plants, then fill it in with dirt and smooth it over.

  On my second Saturday at Endicott’s Nursery a customer walks out of the greenhouse toward the shed where I am working, two little girls trailing behind her. I know even before I can fully see them that they are identical twins, five or six years old. They have thin freckled faces and straight red hair and a rangy, underfed look. The woman tells me with some irritation that there’s no one in the greenhouses, she needs some salvia.

  I wipe my hands on my apron and lead her to the salvia flats. “You know, there isn’t enough help around here,” the woman says sourly. One of the little girls sidles up to her and leans against her, clutching her pants leg. Her thumb is plugged firmly into her mouth. Her twin inspects the flats, poking her fingers into the dirt. “Stop that,” her mother snaps.

  The girl continues jabbing the flats and stares at her mother challengingly. “I hate you,” she says.

  The woman raises her hand to strike, then glances at me and puts her hand down. “What kind of talk is that from a little girl?” she asks. “If I’d ever said that to my own mother she would have tanned my bottom so I wouldn’t sit down for a week. Yours too, I bet.”

  “Shall I ring this up for you?” I ask. The mother walks away holding her plants. The twins fall in step behind her and in unison they stick out their tongues at her back. Then they giggle, mashing their hands against their mouths.

  That evening, counting out my cash, Mr. Endicott says he has received some complaints about me since I started working at the nursery. Customers say I am unfriendly, that I make them uneasy. I stand too far away, I don’t appear to listen. I don’t give helpful answers to their questions. I stare down at my hands while Mr. Endicott speaks. I have lost weight since my arrival at the abbey and the hands look bony to me, naked.

  “I will try to do better,” I tell him.

  Fourteen

  The Calliope was once a grand hotel, to judge by the cavernous lobby with its fading mural of unicorns and dancing nymphs and youths being fed from baskets of grapes and berries. The vaulted ceiling was still golden in patches, but there were long brown stains the width of a finger running down the nymphs’ faces and pooling dirtily beside the youths’ sandaled feet. Whatever it once was, the Calliope was now a transient hotel, charging by the week, where the city’s Emergency Assistance Unit referred “burnt-outs,” as they called people like me. It was only twenty blocks uptown from my apartment, and I considered it a good omen to have been placed so close to my old neighborhood. The day after the fire, in borrowed clothes, I went to my bank and drew upon my meager savings, then installed myself in a room containing one sink, a hot plate, a refrigerator no taller than my knee, and a clothesline that stretched between the closet and a nail in the wall. I bought two shirts, two pairs of pants, underwear and socks, a coat, and some food. After this burst of activity I sank into a profound fatigue. Despite my hunger—I had not eaten since my middle-of-the-night breakfast at the fire station—I could not rouse myself to make a meal. From the room next door came the tantalizing smell of spices and cooking meat. I’d seen a foreign-looking family of six leave that room earlier in the day, the mother carrying an enormous garbage bag, the four children running zigzags behind her. I wondered how they managed to cook meat on an electric hot plate. I listened to the children’s muffled chatter and the laughter and scolding of the grown-ups.

  The next morning I awakened having forgotten where I was, and when the room with its four corners and squat refrigerator came back to me I huddled again under the covers. I had dreamed of the baskets of fruit on the mural, of lying in the grass and being fed by long slender hands. Eventually I forced myself upright and arranged my groceries on the counter: cornflakes, white rice, a can of black beans. I could smell the family next door again. Something oatmeal-like this time but more exotic, something warm and grainy and sweet. Disheartened, I left the cornflakes alone and got myself dressed. My hands trembled so badly that it was hard to button the shirt, but nevertheless I disdained the elevator and walked the seven flights down to the lobby. This energized me momentarily. I nodded to the bored guard who sat at the reception desk, and strode out into the bright sun like a man with a plan. But as soon as I reached the sidewalk I felt weak again. I picked my way slowly downtown, scanning the unfamiliar streets for a place to eat. At the first diner I came to all the booths were taken, so I sat on a stool at the front and ordered eggs, French toast, home fries, sausage, and coffee. As soon as the plates appeared in front of me I realized that I had not brought any money. The waitress’s eyes narrowed suspiciously as I stuttered out an explanation, but then, studying me further, they softened.

  “You come back tomorrow and pay me,” she said. “It’ll be all right.” She winked conspiratorially.

  The smell of sausage and browned potatoes rose from the plate; my mouth was wet with need. “No,” I said. “I can’t pay.” I could not bear her standing there feeling pity for me, believing that I had tried to cheat her.

  “Don’t leave, honey,” she said, but I was already on my way.

  It was just as well, I thought, as my feet moved me automatically southward, in the direction of my old neighborhood. Eating out was an extravagance. Cereal in my room, inexpensive staples: that was what I ought to be content with. Just when I felt that I must stop and catch my breath, I saw that I was near my old library branch. I went in, glad for the familiar room and for the smell of books and overcoats. I sat at a table and put my head in my arms until someone touched me on the shoulder and told me that no sleeping was allowed in the library. I looked up and recognized one of the librarians.

  “Oh, hello,” she stammered, flustered. She did not know my name but had often seen me here. “That’s all right,” I told her. “I’m sorry, I wasn’t feeling well.” I walked past the circulation desk and onto the street, where I supported myself against an iron railing. When my eyes stopped swimming I saw across the way a traffic island with two benches, one mercifully free, and I crossed over to it and sank down to rest.

  The next day, fortified by a quick meal in my room, I went straight to the library and, in an attempt to broadcast health and purpose, walked stiffly erect to the nearest wall of shelves, which happened to hold a set of encyclopedias. I took down the first volume and opened to page one.

  A. The name of this letter in the Phoenician period resembled the Hebrew name aleph, meaning “ox”; the form is thought to derive from an early symbol resembling the head of an ox.

  Aardvark, “earth-pig,” the Afrikaans name for an exclusively African termite-eating mammal of the genus Orycteropus, comprising the order Tubulidentata (q.v.). . . .

  I read for a few hours, through Adelaide, a tenth-century Italian empress, skipping some overlong bits on accounting and Aberdeenshire in
Scotland. The librarian who had surprised me the day before passed my table, nodding encouragingly. Sometime after noon I stood up, refreshed, no more certain than I had been that morning of what the future held, but convinced that I would find a way to meet it. If I come back tomorrow, I thought, I’ll be able to read as far as Aeronautics; the next day will take me through Africa.

  Day by day I felt stronger. One morning, instead of stopping at the library, I kept on walking. There was a spring omen in the air, the scent of hairline cracks in buried seeds. Heartened by the unusually mild weather, I splurged on a loaf of bakery bread, stuffing the ragged chunks into my mouth. Soon, I told myself, I would visit the park. Was the witch-hazel bush thriving? As I walked, I mentally went over my finances. I had enough money in the bank to stay at the Calliope for another four weeks, maybe five. And then what? An office job? Who would hire me, after fifteen years out of work, even to do typing? I tried to picture myself as a supermarket cashier or telemarketer. I tried to imagine repeating the same dull activities over and over again for hours at a stretch, punching numbers into a cash register or repeating a sales pitch to people I called at home during the dinner hour. What about a job in the library? I conjured up the boxy, well-lit room, the pleasant rustle of magazines. I resolved to speak to the librarian, even as it occurred to me that library jobs required advanced degrees and computer skills. Perhaps I could be hired to clean the library?