The Understory

by Pamela Erens

  When I reached the Chelsea Zen Center it was 9:00 AM. I sat on my stoop, chewing the end of my loaf, keeping my eyes on the front door. Today would be the day that Patrick would come; I was sure of it. The hours passed and I waited, expectant, glad. I imagined taking a walk with Patrick in the park, pointing out the plants pressing toward their bloom time, naming them for him. Did he know their names? I touched the book in my coat pocket for reassurance.

  Just before one o’clock his tall form rounded the corner and the blood rushed to my head as I spotted his lope, the pants that flapped loose on his legs. That I’d had a premonition of his arrival convinced me that I was graced with some special intuition today, that everything I did from here on would be magical, correct. I waited until Patrick entered the building, then crossed the street and followed him in. His face would light up when he saw me; he would grow nervous, appealingly unsure of himself. I’ve been wondering about you since the fire, he would tell me. How are you doing? Where did you go? I would hint that I had found comfortable lodgings, that everything was all right. Then I would hand him the book, saying, I have been meaning to give you this as a thank-you. For the photograph you brought me.

  But Jack, with all you’ve been through! Were you able to save anything at all? . . . I’m so sorry. Is there anything I can do?

  If it’s not too much trouble, perhaps you could bring me another copy of the photograph.

  Of course!

  In my pocket I would find one of the scrap-paper cards from the library, and on it I would neatly write the phone number of the Calliope.

  He would turn the pages of the book.

  Frederick Goddard Tuckerman. I’ve never heard of him. Thank you. I love poetry.

  A pair of white orchids stood in a tall vase on an altar at the front of the meditation room. Patrick took off his shoes, and from my spot a few feet away I could see his dark socks threaded with silver. He sat down on a cushion and tucked his hair behind his ears, a sweet, childish movement that made me shiver. I walked forward, my heart in my mouth, clutching the book of sonnets. But another man cut into my path, saying Patrick’s name, and I shrank back, first in surprise, then with an instinct to hide. Patrick stood up and the man put his arm around his shoulder. The man said something genial, and Patrick put his lips to his cheek. I sank back against a wall, forcing myself to watch. Patrick’s hand dropped low on the man’s back and rested there as if this were the most natural thing in the world, as if this spot and his hand were old companions.

  The bell sounded for the meditation session to begin. Patrick sat down and the man stepped back. Trapped, I sat down, too, stuffing the book back into my pocket. Were Patrick and the man lovers? I focused my eyes on the sunstruck floor and listened to the sounds of breathing, the rustlings of people still arranging themselves on their mats. The book poked into my thigh, making it impossible to get comfortable. I followed the sound of footsteps: someone was walking slowly up and down the aisles. It must have been the man who opened and closed the doors, the one in robes who carried a long painted stick. The leader chanted a brief prayer. Then there was silence.

  Were they lovers? I raised my head and looked around, finally spotting Patrick in the row of bodies toward the front. His friend was in the row behind him. I stared at the man’s thick curls, his broad neck. When he’d embraced Patrick I’d noted the nylon athletic shirt he was wearing, tight across his chest. The robed monitor caught my eye and frowned. I bent my head and tried to follow my own breathing. If I were to get up and walk four steps forward, I would be standing right next to Patrick. If I called out in a soft voice, he would hear me. I shifted on my mat, shaking some of the ache out of my legs and buttocks. I was turning my gaze back to Patrick, past the gold Buddha grinning on the altar, when I heard a loud crack and a fiery pain spread across my shoulders. My head snapped back in alarm, my heart pounded. The monitor was already on his way down the aisle, calmly holding the stick with which he had struck me. A humiliated flush rose to my face. Just then the bell pealed briefly, and another droning chant was intoned. The room filled with the sound of knees cracking, feet testing the floor. I massaged my throbbing shoulder and stood up unsteadily. Patrick, passing by, turned his head with a startled look. Then he was past me and out the door.

  A man’s hand descended upon my arm. It was the monitor. Up close, he had a round, whiskery face and was a full head shorter than I was. “I hope you don’t mind. It’s our way here. It’s not meant as punishment but to encourage concentration.”

  “Yes, yes.” I was anxious for him to remove his hand, which made it impossible for me to think of anything else.

  “I hope you’ll return, you’re a new face.”

  “Yes,” I said. I grabbed my coat from the floor and hurried away.

  Perhaps Patrick would be waiting out front for me, I thought, but the sidewalk was empty. I looked up and down the block, hoping for a glimpse of him. It came to me clearly that if I pretended there was nothing unusual in my having been at the center today then he would not believe that there was. What a coincidence, I would say. And by the way, I have something I’ve been meaning to give you.

  I headed toward Patrick’s office, wondering if I could catch up with him, but as I drew close to the building I lost courage. I changed direction and walked until I saw a restaurant. The young woman at the hostess’s stand asked, “Lunch?” and I told her I only wanted to borrow a phone book. There were three Allegras in the Manhattan white pages. The name looked so powerfully beautiful, shining out from the long columns of tiny type, that for a moment I grew dizzy. There was an Allegra, P, on Thirty-Seventh Street. I took down the number and left.

  The weather was really fine now: sunny and soft, with a light breeze. Despite the expense I rode the subway uptown, feeling celebratory. The park was busy with bicyclists, joggers, and children. I moved slowly along the paths, feeling as if I had been away for a very long time. The trees swayed, testing the atmosphere, readying themselves for the effort ahead. I entered the Ramble and searched for the witch-hazel bush. When I saw it standing sturdy and healthy among the other bushes I patted it all over in a kind of happy daze. Without admitting to myself what I was doing, I moved gradually in the direction of a well-known spot, a place off the trail that was sheltered by tall Japanese knotweed and marked by a deeply ridged cork tree. When I found the tree I backed myself up against it and waited. Within moments I heard movement in the weeds a couple of yards away. I inched myself a quarter circle around the tree, listened again. There was panting now, and, in counterpoint, a low rhythmic whimpering. I wished that I could see the men, the position of their legs and arms and heads, the contortions of their faces. I imagined a two-tiered creature with four arms, four legs, two heads: something fearsome and fascinating at the same time. All at once there was a gurgling sound and then a jagged explosion of breath, like someone expressing impatience. I pressed myself against the tree, aware of how exposed I was, aware that if either of the men exited in my direction they would see me in my spy’s crouch. My heart was loud in my ears as first one and then another set of footsteps moved in the opposite direction. I stood up, bathed in sweat, and restored my equilibrium by carefully folding my coat over my arm, like a man about to leave an office meeting. I combed my hand through my hair. Then I moved with shaky steps back onto the trail. A middle-aged woman with thick hips and bird-watcher’s binoculars on a beaded chain around her neck studied me sternly as I emerged.

  I walked until I was steadier again and could trust myself to sit quietly. Then I found a bench and closed my eyes, listening to the footfalls and fragments of conversation that passed me by. I pictured my face as if from above, my eyelids translucent in the sunlight, veins visible in my forehead, the age lines around my mouth etched in place.

  “Watch out, Dylan!” came a shout close by, and I looked out into the world to find a boy in a heap on top of my outstretched feet. His mother bent over him, her perfume flooding my nostrils, and asked if he was hurt. But it became c
lear that the cause of the boy’s tears was the empty ice-cream cone he was holding up to her view like a snuffed torch. The ice cream had landed on my pants. I shook it off as best I could, but a sticky cold had already begun to seep through the cheap fabric.

  The woman lifted the boy to his feet and apologized to me. “I’m so sorry. Of course I’ll pay for the dry cleaning.”

  A rivulet of ice cream ran down the leg of my pants as I stood up and reached into my pocket. The Tuckerman book was wet, the cover tacky when I pressed it with my finger. I shook my head at the woman and began to jog toward Central Park West.

  Back at the hotel I tore off the pants and filled the sink with soapy water. I dabbed the book with a wet washcloth, which only seemed to make the stain spread. Anxiously I blotted it, then put it on the windowsill to dry. Then I dressed in my other pair of pants and walked down the hall to the pay phone.

  It was not yet evening. Patrick would not be home; he need never know that I had called. Would there be an answering machine? Would someone else pick up—perhaps the man from the meditation hall? After three rings, a machine clicked on, and Patrick’s voice spoke melodiously into my ear: “I’m sorry I’ve missed you. I’d like to talk to you, so please leave a message.” I knew these words were not meant especially for me, and yet it seemed to me that they were, that it could not be entirely arbitrary that I was hearing them now. I hung up, dug in my pocket for another quarter, and dialed again. “I’d like to talk to you.” After this I resisted the temptation to call again and reluctantly went back to my room to spend the evening reading a book the librarian had given me. She had come up to my carrel the previous afternoon. “I wondered if you might enjoy this,” she said. “We just got it in.” She glanced down at the encyclopedia as if its contents now worried her. Then she put the book, a murder mystery, next to it and walked away without saying anything more. I didn’t look at it until I got home. The opening disgusted me, a description of a woman stabbed and left for dead in an alleyway. Yet I read on, looking over my shoulder every so often as if someone were watching me and might disapprove.

  I slept that night even more poorly than usual. The hotel at night was never quiet; at all hours I woke to the banging of doors, music, sobbing, arguments. Every day I told myself that soon I would get used to it all, that one morning my body would feel the simple refreshment of a good night’s rest. But the days had passed and I had not gotten used to the noises; on the contrary, they had begun to inflame me more and more, so that even quiet footsteps in the hallway or a neighbor’s soft snoring made my eyes fly wide open. That night the book the librarian gave me entered my dreams with images of blood and death and caused me to wake, shouting silently. Finally I got up and ate my breakfast sleepily, watching the time. Did Patrick get to work at nine? At ten? It did not seem to me that I could wait that long to call again and hear his voice telling me he wanted to speak to me. At eight-thirty I hurried down the corridor and dropped a coin into the phone. Surely he would have left by now. I listened anxiously to one ring, then another, then relaxed as the third ring heralded the click of the answering machine. It was only as I heard the same words again that I realized how sorry I was that he had not answered in person.

  The rest of the day was oppressively long. I walked down to the West Twenties, pushing myself on with impatient words whenever I was tired and tempted to stop. This walk would have been nothing to me in the old days, I reminded myself. But I was exhausted by the time I drew near Patrick’s office. I dared not approach the building too closely. I did not want to surprise him again. I re-created the look he had given me in the meditation room and tried to read into it some sign of pleasure or welcome. On a stoop some blocks away I ground the heels of my hands into my sore eyes. Then I thought about the journey home and tears leaked from under my hands. I was simply too tired to walk back. I removed a precious bill and two quarters from my wallet, then limped over to the subway.

  At five-thirty that evening I began to call Patrick. I called every fifteen minutes, strictly waiting out the time interval, watching as each coin disappeared down the slot forever. Once I hung up just as the machine clicked on, in the hope that my coin would be returned to me, but the trick didn’t work, and I was only cheated of the sound of Patrick’s voice. At six-thirty I began to get upset. Hadn’t I waited a good long time already? Shouldn’t Patrick be home by now? I began to call every ten minutes, then every five. By seven-forty, when Patrick picked up the phone, my throat was so swollen with disappointment that at first I could not speak a word.

  “Hello?” Patrick said. And then again: “Hello?”

  “Patrick, Patrick, it’s Jack Ronan. Jack Gorse. Good God, I don’t know who I am anymore.” I laughed and before he could reply I began hurriedly to explain why I had been at the Zen center the previous day, babbling something about my lifelong interest in Buddhism, realizing that with each word I piled on it became more and more obvious that I had been there solely to see him, that our meeting had not been an accident. I scratched at my neck, hot with discomfort. Patrick tried to get a word in, but I could not stop myself. I repeated something or other I had read about the differences between Japanese and Korean Buddhism. Finally a sentence got through to me. “Where are you calling from?” he asked, and it came back to me, the long, dim hallway smelling of beans and stale coffee, the musty carpeting, room after room filled with people who had lost their homes.

  “I’m at a hotel,” I said. “For the meanwhile.”

  “I was wondering what had happened to you. Have you been all right?”

  The words I had imagined, the very words. I flushed with pleasure and clutched the receiver more tightly.

  “Yes,” I said. “I’m good. I’m really good.”

  There was a brief silence on the other end. “Do you need money?”

  “No,” I answered, shocked. I tried to purge my voice of any need or trouble. “It’s the photograph. You know, the one you took of me.” I poured out my explanation: I missed the picture, couldn’t get it out of my mind. It was a beautiful piece, really a work of art. Might he have another copy?

  I sank down into a crouch, stretching the phone cord taut, and closed my eyes.

  “I’m flattered,” Patrick said slowly. “But I don’t have one just now. I could print up another copy, of course. It might take me a few days.”

  I assured him there was no hurry.

  “Well, all right, then. Just tell me where to send it.”

  “Actually,” I said, pushing the receiver hard against my collarbone to keep from shaking, “would you mind meeting in person?” The hotel wasn’t very good with mail, I explained. They’d lost something from my bank just the other day. I said that the best place to meet would be the old apartment. My hotel was very far uptown. Besides, I had yet to go over there to inspect. I still intended to salvage anything that might be salvageable.

  He hesitated, but something told me that if I calmly pressed the point he would do what I wanted. “There’s no rush,” I insisted again. “Whenever it’s convenient for you.”

  “Just a sec.” There was a rustling and then he asked me if I was free the following Thursday at six. He could stop by, he said, after a meeting with a client.

  I said that Thursday at six would be fine.

  As soon as I hung up the phone I began to laugh. I was going to see Patrick. I had no place to live, no job, almost no money, but I was going to see Patrick. I walked back to my room and stretched out on my bed. To see him again, feel his presence, speak a few words—that was all I wanted. I was not greedy. And maybe something I would say or do would make him feel that he did not want this to be our last meeting.

  The ceiling, I noted, had a long brown crack in the shape of a question mark. This made me laugh again. Even question marks appeared to be in my favor; whatever was to happen was sure to be right and good. There were six days until I would see Patrick—six days. How would I fill them? I retrieved the Tuckerman book from the windowsill and leafed through the fa
miliar sonnets. The stain on the cover had not vanished completely when it had dried and it now looked like a large ghostly thumbprint. I could not keep my mind on the words.

  That night, for the first time since I could remember, I slept deeply and well. I woke early, alert and hungry, and after a quick breakfast I left the hotel and walked to Central Park. I passed through Mariners’ Gate in the dawn chill, filling my lungs with the smell of thawed earth and old rocks and pollen. Spring was coming in a rush. The crocuses and daffodils were out in full strength, forsythia was swelling on the branch, ready to burst forth. Within days the magnolia would push out its spoon-shaped petals. The early red maples were in leaf and glittering in the sun. Most years I had mixed emotions about the coming of spring, the simultaneous arrival of bloom and busyness: all the bodies, noise, and music that filled the park in fair weather. The runners and in-line skaters and jugglers and mimes, the political pamphleteers, horseback riders, martial-arts practitioners: all of these crowded me deeper into the Ramble, into the uninhabited gaps in the park. But today I was only grateful, feeling as if this spring was one I might easily have been deprived of. I was alive, I was here to see it. I fell in with a group taking a nature walk and listened as an elderly woman in an army surplus jacket and Yankees cap pointed out plants and early-spring birds. I enjoyed pretending to know nothing, to be as blank as the woman who asked if a spruce was a pine. “Look,” said the tour guide, indicating a squirrel with a bitten-off ear and empty eye socket. “Winter’s hard on everyone.”

  Afterward I walked to Egret, stood by the front desk, and waited as the tinny sound of the bells subsided. Finally Carl could not resist raising his head. “I’ve been sick,” I told him. “Sorry to hear that,” he replied gruffly, and returned to his papers. I smiled and went to explore the stacks. But when I arrived at the Stardust Marion refused to look at me. She stared into the distance as she waited for my order, tapping her pencil on her pad as if ticking off demerits for disloyalty, abandonment. I pretended not to notice. The next day I came back and it was the same. By the third day she had forgiven me. She slid a plate of home fries next to my coffee, telling me that the kitchen had sent it out by accident. “It’ll just go in the garbage otherwise,” she said.