“No,” David says. “It’s for your mother.”
“Come on up,” I say.
We get in the elevator along with a woman in a fur coat. When she gets off on the fourth floor David says, “Merry Christmas.” She doesn’t answer him.
“You have a very unfriendly building. I said ‘Merry Christmas’ to everyone who came in your lobby while I was waiting. Only about three people answered me.”
My apartment is pretty clean except for a half-eaten cinnamon Pop-Tart on the coffee table. While David hangs up his coat I hide it under a Time magazine.
David sits on the couch. “I think I’m a little drunk,” he says. “We had our office Christmas party today. It was awful.”
“Do you want some wine? Or a drink?”
“I better not,” David says. “But I will. Just some wine. Or a beer. Do you have a beer?”
“No,” I say.
“Then wine.”
I go into the kitchen. David follows with the present. “Open this,” he says. “I’ll get the wine.”
I exchange the corkscrew for the present. “Since when do you give me Christmas presents?”
“I don’t know,” David says. “Since now. Open it.”
I open the present. David watches me, a glass of wine in either hand. Inside the box is a thin silver ring set with five small rubies. It’s an old ring; I’ve seen it before. When Loren married David, his mother gave her three of them. There was one with diamonds and one with sapphires. She wore all three of them stacked on one of her long fingers. Loren and David are divorced now. Loren is, I suppose, my best friend.
“Isn’t this Loren’s?” I ask.
“No,” David says. “Not anymore.”
“But why are you giving it to me? You should give it back to your mother. Or save it for Kate.”
“There are others. Kate can have the others. I wanted you to have this one.”
“Why?” I ask.
David puts the glasses of wine down on the table. “I don’t know,” he says. “I feel bad. I mean, I know how you feel.”
“About what?”
“Me,” David says.
I put the lid on the box and hand it to David. “Here,” I say. “I’m sorry but I can’t accept it.”
“Why can’t you accept it?”
“I don’t want it,” I say. “You shouldn’t have given it to me.” I drink some of my wine.
David opens the box and looks at the ring. He touches it with his finger. “You don’t understand,” he says. “It’s no big deal. It’s just a token. Of affection. I want you to have it. It’s important to me that you do. Please?”
He holds out the box. I sip my wine. I decide I’ll take the ring for David’s sake. If he wants to give it to me so badly, O.K. But I won’t ever wear it and I won’t ever let it mean anything to me. It will just be this ring.
“O.K.,” I say. “Thanks.”
“Put it on,” David says. “Try it on.”
I take the ring out of the box and put it on my right-hand ring finger. “See,” I say, laying my hand flat on the table.
David touches my hand. “It’s beautiful,” he says.
“I’ll be right back,” I say. I go into the bathroom. I wash my face, and rinse it with cold water. When I come out David is standing in the living room eating the Pop-Tart.
“I’m starving,” he says. “Do you want to go out to dinner? Or are you doing something?”
“Where do you want to go?”
“Well, actually, I was thinking about going downtown. To the place where Heath works.” Heath is David’s lover. He was David’s temporary secretary last summer when his real secretary went on vacation.
“He’s not at the bank anymore?”
“He hasn’t been for a while. He’s a waiter, at this place called Café Wisteria. Do you want to go? It’s supposed to be good. Come. It will be fun.”
Café Wisteria is a large, noisy restaurant. There are several dozen decorated Christmas trees hanging upside down from the ceiling. David confers with the hostess, a black woman in a green leotard.
“See,” David says, as we sit down. “I told you this would be fun.”
I try to locate Heath in the whirling mass of waiters, busboys, and diners, but it’s hard because all the waiters look alike in that gay-New York waiter way. They’re all tall and handsome. They all look like they just got their hair cut: The backs of their heads are as smooth and tended as their faces.
“Which one is Heath?” I ask. I have to yell over the music.
“I don’t see him,” David shouts back. A waiter who looks very much like Heath but who isn’t Heath comes to take our drink order. Moments later they arrive, along with a plate of crudites shaped like a wreath.
David and I don’t talk much; we eat broccoli and watch the crowd. Now Ella Fitzgerald is singing “Santa Claus Is Coming to Town,” and as I sip my cold amber drink I think she’s wrong, he’s already come, he’s here. I feel like we’re sitting on the ceiling, or we’re falling, or the trees are falling. Something’s falling.
“What are you doing for Christmas?” David asks.
“Going to my parents’,” I say. “It will be deadly. Julian’s in South America and Adrian is going on this lesbian cruise to the Greek Islands. So it will be just me and Harriet and Winston.”
“Christmas is the worst,” David says. “It’s designed to make people like us feel bad.”
“What are you doing?”
“Actually, it might work out O.K. for me this year. I have Kate Christmas Eve and Loren has her Christmas day. Gregory is going to be in L.A., so instead of shuffling her back and forth, Loren and I will take her up to my mother’s. We’ll pretend we’re still married for a few days.”
“Does Gregory know?”
“I don’t know,” David says. “I take it things are kind of rocky with them.”
“What about Heath?”
“I can’t very well take Heath to my mother’s,” David says. “Not that he’d come. Not that I’d ask him.”
“Does your mother know about Heath?”
“God, no. My mother is still waiting for me to get back together with Loren. She wants a grandson.”
“My mother has given up on us producing natural grandchildren,” I say. “She’s joined this program called ‘Guardian Grandparents.’ She’s adopted about eight million black children. She’s always showing me pictures. It’s cruel.”
David isn’t listening. And then I see why: He’s watching Heath approach through the crowd of tables, turning sideways to let people pass.
I love eating out. It makes me feel sexy and wanted. I know that everyone in this restaurant—except Heath—assumes David and I are lovers. It’s just something you assume about people who are eating together. If you see a man and a woman walking down the street you don’t assume they’re lovers, because walking down the street isn’t sexy. But if you see the same two people in a restaurant it’s different. It is sexy. It’s great.
I look around the huge room at all the people leaning toward one another across the lavender tablecloths, their faces glowing with candlelight and quiet erotic energy, but then I realize that all these other couples, people who look like they can’t wait to get home and fall into bed with each other—maybe they’re all just like David and me. Maybe there’s nothing really happening between them, maybe it’s just the wine and the food and music. Maybe nobody’s getting what they want anymore, maybe everything is complex and involved, and everyone here will go home alone to their cats and clock radios.
Heath arrives, with a second round of drinks. “Hi,” he says. “Welcome to Cafe Hysteria.” He puts his hand on David’s shoulder. “Are you guys having fun?”
“It’s great,” I say.
“The drinks are on the house,” Heath says. “But you have to pay for the food.”
“What should we order?” David asks.
“The swordfish isn’t bad. Avoid anything with sauce. The sauce chef didn’t show u
p. They’re trying to wing it back there.”
Heath gets off work early and joins us for coffee. He’s changed into his street clothes and it looks like he might have taken a shower. He smells very clean, and his hair looks wet, although it could just be slicked back with stuff.
The three of us have trouble talking. We talk about the dinner—it was good; then about what Heath’s doing for Christmas—he’s working. I excuse myself and go to the ladies’ room.
There’s a woman leaning against the sink smoking, and she’s still there when I come out of the stall. She’s wearing a gold lame space suit. “Did you happen to see this guy out there?” she asks. “He’s wearing sunglasses and has a funny nose?”
“How funny?”
“I don’t know,” she says. “It’s too big or something.”
“I don’t think so,” I say.
“Could you check. Please?”
I open the door. There’s a man standing at the telephone watching the ladies’ room. He’s wearing shades and his nose is funny looking. I close the door.
“He’s out there,” I say. “He’s on the phone.”
“He’s been on the fucking phone for hours,” the woman says.
“Who is he?”
“Oh, just some noxious freak of nature I used to be married to. He follows me around and verbally abuses me. Could you do me a favor?”
“What?”
“Just walk out with me, and talk. He’ll leave me alone if I’m talking to someone. He’s a coward.”
“O.K.,” I say. “Sure.”
We walk out of the ladies’ room. The man hangs up the phone and shouts “Julie! Julie!”
“Walk,” Julie urges. “Just keep walking.”
I escort Julie safely to her table. She is dining with a large group of similarly outfitted people. She promises to do the same for me someday.
I return to my table. “We’re going over to Heath’s,” David says. “It’s a Wonderful Life is on TV. Do you want to come?”
“No,” I say. “I’ll just go home.”
“Come,” says Heath. “It’ll be fun. Besides, you’ve never seen my apartment.”
This hardly seems like reason enough to go, but I don’t argue this point. I’m sick of resisting things.
The cab drops us off at the corner of Twentieth Street and First Avenue. David goes into a Korean market to buy coffee beans and cigarettes.
Heath and I go up to his apartment. It’s right over the little store. There’s a large open room which has a kitchen at one end. There’s a fat cat sleeping on the kitchen table. Along one whole wall is a floor-to-ceiling mirror.
Heath picks up the cat. “This is Spike,” he says.
“What are the mirrors for?” I ask.
“My roommate is a dancer,” says Heath. He hangs our coats up.
“I didn’t know you had a roommate,” I say.
“He’s on tour,” Heath says. “He’s not around very much. He’s with Alvin Ailey.”
He turns the TV on. Jimmy Stewart is crying and praying in a bar. We both watch. After a few minutes David comes in. He must have keys. He’s bought espresso beans, a pint of Haagen-Dazs ice cream, and a pack of Marlboro Lights.
Heath gets up and grinds the beans. I pretend to be very interested in the movie. Now Jimmy Stewart is driving his car into a tree. Suddenly the room smells of coffee.
We drink espresso and watch the movie. Heath and David sit on the couch, and I sit on a chair. After a while I get up and use Heath’s bathroom. It is wallpapered with postcards. There’s one, right above the light switch, of Block Island that I’m sure David sent him. David’s mother has a house on Block Island. I went there once with Loren and David, when they were still married. I untack the card and turn it over. It is from David.
Dear Heath,
The weather has been great and I’m having fun. Today I played golf with my brother. Do you play golf? It’s boring, I think. Hope you had a good weekend.
Regards, D.
I tack it back up. Regards, I think: not love.
When I go back into the living room someone has turned the lights off so just the TV illuminates the room. David and Heath are sitting close together on the couch, passing the pint of Chocolate Chocolate Chip ice cream back and forth. I watch them for a minute, from behind.
I hate being here. I put on my coat. They don’t hear me. I have a feeling Heath is stroking David’s leg but I can’t really see. I could be just imagining it.
“I’m going to go,” I say. “Thanks for the espresso.”
They both turn around.
“Don’t leave yet,” Heath says. “It’s almost over.”
“I’ve seen it before,” I say. “Many times.”
“Lillian, wait,” David says. “I was going to go back uptown with you.”
I don’t believe this for a second. David has no intention of going back uptown. If you’re going back uptown you don’t take your shoes off.
“I want to leave now,” I say. “I’m tired.”
“How are you going to get home?” David asks.
“Cab it,” I say. I put my gloves on.
“Can I come down and help you find one?”
“That’s all right,” I say. They both finally get up off the couch and come over to the door. “Good night,” I say.
Before they can kiss me I leave. When I get out on the street I look back up at the apartment window. I can’t see them—just the silvery light from the TV. I go into the little store and buy a pack of cigarettes. A middle-aged Asian man in a jacket and tie sells them to me. He is very kind. He gives me three packs of matches and wishes me Merry Christmas. I feel like hanging out with him for a while. Like the rest of my life.
Instead, I start walking up First Avenue. It’s warm out and the fresh air feels good. Across the intersection of First Avenue and Thirty-fourth Street, Santa is flying in a reindeer-pulled sleigh. The reindeer diminish in size: Each one is smaller than the one behind it. It’s supposed to look like they’re flying away into the night, but it doesn’t. It looks like Santa couldn’t find enough healthy reindeer this year. I take off my gloves to smoke a cigarette, and notice the ring on my finger. I forgot I had it on. I think of ways to get rid of it: tossing it under the wheels of a bus or handing it to a bum. I don’t do either of these things, though. I just stand under a streetlight and look at it.
NOT THE POINT
THE HALLS OF THE HIGH school are teeming with manic, barely dressed students, and I press myself against the tile wall and let them pass. There is something frighteningly erotic about this sea of bodies: Girls’ stomachs and boys’ shoulders are bared in a combination of what seems to be narcissism and lust, as if they have, emerged, not from History, but from some orgy, and are roaming the corridors in an effort to regroup, return to their lairs, and continue doing whatever it is they do behind these steamy glass doors.
After a few minutes, a bell shrills, the halls clear; and the school regains its composure. I find my way to the guidance office, and Mrs. King, Ellery’s counselor. She asks me to sit down.
“Mr. Groener couldn’t come?”
“No,” I say. “He’s in the Philippines.”
“Philadelphia?”
“No, the Philippines.”
“The Philippines?”
“On business.”
“Of course,” says Mrs. King, as if I were lying. “Well, I’ve taken the liberty of asking the school nurse to join us. I hope that’s all right with you?”
I nod.
“Ellery’s problems—or troubles—are not only academic. That’s why Mr. Katikonas wanted to speak with us.”
“Who’s Mr. Katikonas?”
“Oh, he’s the nurse. Miss Holloran retired, and, in an effort to update our health offerings, we’ve hired Mr. Katikonas. He has a background in drug and alcohol abuse, as well as adolescent psychology. Educational nursing has changed since our day.” Mrs. King pauses, and then adds, “Not that Ellery’s problems are stimu
lus-effected.”
I smile.
Mr. Katikonas enters the small cubicle. He is wearing jeans and a T-shirt that says “Say No” on its chest. If I had met him in the hall I would have thought he was a student. He shakes hands with me, and then with Mrs. King, as if he knows each of us equally poorly. Perhaps he does. He looks around for a chair, but there isn’t one.
“Oh,” says Mrs. King. “You can get a chair from Willy’s office.”
“That’s O.K.,” says the nurse. “I’d rather stand.” He leans against the wall.
“Well,” says Mrs. King, “Mr. Katikonas and I wanted to talk to you about Ellery. Mainly about the sunglasses.”
“I guessed,” I say.
“You’re aware of the problem?” Mrs. King asks.
“Yes.”
“So he wears them at home?” the nurse asks. I pause, think about lying. But I don’t. “Yes,” I say.
“All the time?”
“Yes.”
“Do you have any idea why?”
“No.”
“Have you talked to him about them?” Mrs. King is obviously our group leader.
“A little,” I say.
“And what did he say?”
“Nothing, really,” I say. “I mean, I just kind of kidded him … I didn’t want to make a big deal out of it.”
“He could be doing serious retinal damage,” the nurse interjects.
“Oh …” I say.
“I’m sure that’s true, John, but that’s not the point,” says Mrs. King. “I think the glasses are a psychological shield he’s building up around himself … they’re a symbol for a deeper problem. The problem isn’t really the sunglasses.”
“Nevertheless,” says the nurse, “he could be damaging his eyes. I feel it’s important to make that point. From a health point of view.”
“Thank you,” I say.
“Mrs. Groener?” Mrs. King asks.
“Yes,” I say.
“Could this be linked with … I mean, Ellery’s record mentions his brother’s recent death. Since he’s a new student, I’m afraid I don’t know him as well as some of my other students. But do you think this is linked with that?”
Ellery’s twin brother, Patrick, committed suicide last year. We’re still trying to adjust, I think. We moved to this new town, and now we’re getting ready to move to the Philippines, where my husband’s been transferred (at his own request). I don’t answer. I don’t yet know how to answer questions like these.
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