Simone’s feelings for Kenny were for the moment beside the point. The whole thing was less frightening if she ignored that part completely. First she had to get through the intermediate phases. She saw the path in front of her like the steps in a cookbook. Kenny was a romantic and would balk at a match of convenience. Kenny would only marry for love, or at least desire, and Simone’s job was to inspire in him one or the other or both. Other girls knew how to manipulate men, to make men do what they wanted. These girls had learned to give signals. Had Simone missed that lesson? She had never needed to show Joseph she was available; it was always so painfully clear he could have her if he wanted.
Simone got out of bed, then stopped and covered her face with her hands. She was extremely conscious of how theatrical she must look, of how odd it was for her to strike a pose like a woman in a painting. If she stood there a minute more, she felt she might never move. She would never get the courage to do what had to be done; it would be simpler in Kenny’s house than in his salon. She had to go to Kenny’s before she lost her nerve. She had time to get there. He never went to work until noon.
She took a long shower and put on clean underwear, stockings, perfume, the dress she’d worn to the wedding. Hadn’t Kenny said she’d looked like a high-class Caribbean whore? Perhaps she could rely on the dress to make her intentions clear. Unhelpful, morale-sapping images kept creeping into her consciousness, descriptions and illustrations from the human sacrifice book: brave girls bejeweled and anointed en route to the pyramids and the pits.
It was not yet nine when Simone drove to Kenny’s house. How far she had come since that first day the children had steered her to Short Eyes! Now she bought a map at a gas station and thought about directions and located the route they’d taken back from Connecticut. Her fear of losing the children forever enabled her to do this without them, to simply drive to Kenny’s without getting lost.
Kenny’s car was in his driveway. Simone sat in Rosemary’s Volvo, thinking of Kenny waiting outside his Spanish teacher’s apartment. And this time what she told herself was: Kenny will understand.
Simone knocked softly on the door, then louder. After a long time Kenny answered: yawning, unshaven, sallow. He wore only a wrinkled white T-shirt and baggy white Jockey shorts. In the frosty morning light his arms and legs looked blue.
Simone’s eyes fixed on Kenny’s. There was nowhere else to look. Yet even with her staring at him it took Kenny ages to focus. Finally he said, “Simone! Jesus Christ! What the fuck are you doing here in the middle of the night? Well, come in.” He turned his back, and she followed him into the house.
The interior was wildly at odds with the house’s façade. For if the neat vinyl siding suggested a tidy elderly couple, inside the couple’s teenage son had stuffed his parents in a closet and gone hog-wild according to the lights of his bad-boy aesthetic. The dividing walls had been removed to make one room. On the floor in a corner was the giant rumpled mattress from which Kenny had just risen. Above it a large poster matched each astrological sign with the silhouette of a man and woman in a different sexual position. Nearby was a wall of bubbling lava lamps and an immense TV. Zebra rugs and neon-colored pillows were artfully scattered about.
Even in his stupefied state Kenny couldn’t stifle the urge to explain how the look of his house expressed him. “Shelly did it, needless to say. But I have to admit I dig it. The sixties astrology fuck poster is a period classic. We spent a fortune making this place look like some sleazo bachelor pad. Rock Hudson meets Jimmy Dean—if both of them were straight. Isn’t it weird how many popular sex symbols turn out to be fags? Doesn’t this seem to indicate that chicks don’t really like guys?”
How disheartening, thought Simone, to see Shelly’s hand in every male habitation. How many men were installed somewhere amid Shelly’s fantasies?
Kenny went into the kitchen and took down a can of espresso and then—very violently, shockingly—slammed the cabinet door. Almost at once he seemed to forget whatever had made him do it and began to whistle a meandering, genial tune.
“Want some java?” he asked Simone, who was still resonating with the slammed cupboard and could barely shake her head yes.
Kenny filled the automatic coffeepot and flipped on the switch and glared as if to intimidate it into bubbling and perking. But the coffee machine would not be bullied and showed no signs of life. Finally Kenny ripped off the brown plastic strainer and flung it into the sink, spraying tarry coffee grounds all over the counter and floor.
“I cannot handle this,” he said. “I cannot fake being the kind of hospitable asshole who gets up at the crack of dawn and makes breakfast for the guests.”
“I’m sorry,” Simone said. “I thought you would be awake. I would never have come here if—”
Something about this must have touched Kenny, because he turned and gently laid his palm along the side of Simone’s face. When he let go, he regarded her strangely.
“Jesus.” He swabbed at her temple. “I got coffee grounds on your cheek.”
While Simone was rubbing her face Kenny said, “I need a shower and shave. Then I’ll be back on line. You can keep me company while I perform my morning toilette.”
Beckoning for Simone to follow, Kenny walked into the bathroom. Simone took several deep breaths to steady herself and then took a couple more. Well, this would make things easier. This was going according to plan. Kenny was taking off his clothes, saying: Go ahead. Seduce me.
But Simone stayed in the living room, pacing and stopping and pacing, decorously avoiding the astrology poster on which twelve couples contorted themselves into pretzels of bliss. By the time she got to the bathroom Kenny was put of the shower and was shaving at the mirror, with a towel around his waist.
Simone hesitated in the doorway; it required an enormous effort of will to get farther into the room. Instead of sitting on the closed toilet lid that Kenny graciously offered, she went and stood behind Kenny, between Kenny and the tub. The bathroom was tiled in rough pumice squares of a subdued sooty gray that despite the warm steam gave the room a cool wintry aura.
Kenny wiped the foggy mirror, which clouded over again. “Go fuck yourself,” he told it. He cleared a circle in which he and Simone appeared, her face behind his shoulder.
Even covered with shaving foam, Kenny was recognizably Kenny, but the face behind him only faintly resembled Simone’s. She saw herself grown older, her flesh pouched, hanging from the bone, gums shrunk from her grinning teeth. She thought of George in the bathroom in the dark, saying Bloody Mary Bloody Mary Bloody Mary. The children thought it was magic to make something bad appear in the mirror, but adults knew it was ordinary: your own face in a bad light.
Simone couldn’t imagine what was going through Kenny’s mind. It seemed to her that they both understood that this was a critical juncture. Unless something happened now, the moment would pass and never return. Simone would sit down on the edge of the tub and prattle about something casual, and Kenny would dress and they would talk and just go on being friendly.
What was needed was some gesture, impossible to mistake. There was a physical but invisible line Simone must cross toward Kenny’s back, and once she was on the other side, it could only mean sex. Why couldn’t Kenny cross that line, why couldn’t he turn and embrace her? She had been crazy to imagine that this was a practical plan; that sex, if they had it, would lead to marriage and to her staying in the United States.
In convent school the sisters had skipped the story of Samson and Delilah, glossed over those chapters and verses and gone on to something else. The girls had believed that the fuss about Samson’s hair embarrassed the bald nuns. Now Simone wished she had studied the story as a possible source of directions to follow at awkward moments like this, when seduction was required.
Simone put her hand on Kenny’s shoulder. His skin was dewy and soft. Kenny gave no sign of noticing. He looked in the mirror and went on shaving. Simone’s hand weighed heavier on him, like a paw or some kin
d of chop. Why couldn’t he reach back and take it?
They couldn’t remain like this very long, some action would have to be taken. Simone would have to give up or take the next step. Really, she should let it go. Kenny had had his chance. If he was attracted to her he would already have responded.
Simone leaned forward from the waist, her breasts almost brushing Kenny. The front of her dress was wet with blotches of water from Kenny’s back. The skin of their shoulders stuck and made a sucking noise when she moved.
Soon her dress was uncomfortably damp. It was better to ignore it. She was glad she couldn’t see herself. How ashamed she would be—an alley cat in a party dress rubbing up against a man in a towel.
Finally Kenny took her hand. Simone waited to see what he would do next. He turned and, still holding Simone’s hand, steered her around to face him.
Smiling crookedly, Kenny said, “I make it a matter of policy never to be in a small enclosed space with a chick and an open razor blade.” He meant for Simone to laugh with him, and she made a sincere attempt.
“Come on.” Kenny rinsed his face and went into the other room.
Simone felt very awkward, all alone in the bathroom, but still she delayed a moment, as Kenny assumed she would. By the time she walked into the main room he’d put on a pair of blue jeans. To Simone the sight of them was a reproach and a humiliation.
This time Simone sat obediently where Kenny indicated she should—perched awkwardly, her knees to her chin, on the edge of the mattress. The sheets matched the bathroom, charcoal gray with a thin white pinstripe; the bottom of the sheet had pulled away, revealing a black leather pad.
“My biker futon,” Kenny explained. “Cultural contradiction.”
Kenny was busy at the mirror, lovingly slicking back his hair with an antique mother-of-pearl comb-and-brush set. “Check out the grooming equipment. Straight from the dressertop of Al Capone or some other dapper kingpin of twenties organized crime.”
Kenny frowned into the mirror. “Getting my hair cut drives me nuts! I go to this chick named Vicky in Newburgh, I know her from the city. Every time I look in the mirror I see what she didn’t get right, and I keep going back and making her fix it. I tell her it’s not a haircut, it’s a three-day ordeal. What’s frustrating is, I wish I could do it myself. Lots of guys are like that. If we could give ourselves blowjobs it might be the end of our social life.”
Simone thought of Kenny’s story about getting a hard-on passing his house. How stupid she’d been not to realize that he was warning her. He’d said it for the same reason that a married man might mention his wife. Once again she’d gotten it wrong, misinterpreted completely. She’d selectively heard the part about his high-school Spanish teacher and had thought that he would have sympathy for her having the nerve to come here. In fact, he had only contempt for her pitiable attempt to seduce him into cheating on the important thing—his love affair with himself.
Simone’s spirit ebbed so dramatically that Kenny must have sensed it. He came over and sat on the edge of the bed and kissed her on the mouth.
That was a relief, of sorts. Kissing was like hiding. At least Simone knew what to do and did not have to decide every minute. She could move her lips against Kenny’s and not be expected to talk. Comfort overwhelmed her, so liquid and accommodating it felt very much like desire.
Kenny said, “I just put gel on my hair. Do you know what it’ll do to these sheets?”
Even now, even after this, Simone was ready to keep on kissing, but Kenny drew back and touched her shoulder and lightly pushed her away. He said, “This is blowing me away. I mean: I am a shithead, but not enough of a shithead to be pulling something like this on you.”
The gathering weight of their kisses had angled them toward the horizontal, but now they sprang up and sat side by side as if they were watching TV Kenny took Simone’s hand and turned her toward him again and, hugging her warmly, said, “You know not to take this personally. It is not a personal thing. I like you as a person, Simone. And it’s not an AIDS thing, either. I mean, I don’t even know: is AIDS still a Haitian thing?”
How was Simone supposed to answer? Many Haitian people were sick, though she had read in a magazine that Haitians in this country were once again allowed to give blood. But none of this would exactly rekindle—or kindle—Kenny’s desire.
Kenny said, “Babe, I meant it when I said that women who aren’t bitches don’t turn me on. I need women to see what I see, how fucking horrible everything is, and when I see them trying to be nice and maintain a positive attitude, I just want to be out of there. I know most guys are the opposite, they like their bimbos happy. It’s part of how totally dishonest things are between guys and women. Guys dig brain-dead chicks telling them life’s great. But girls like that just turn me off—I’m not saying you’re one.
“Oh, you know what I mean, Simone. You’re just not a total cunt. And to tell the truth, I don’t understand how you can be wasting yourself on this fucked-up Hudson Landing scene. If I were you, if I looked like you, I would be history.
“What amazes me is how many chicks actually have that good attitude—when you stop and consider the shit they go through daily. I myself used to be really bad. Sometimes things would happen like today, I’d be fooling around with a woman and I would let it get so far that the chick and I would be naked, and I would tell her I couldn’t do it, it wasn’t happening between us. That was really lousy—I’m much better about that now.”
Simone was struck by how often men tried to comfort you by making you feel part of a group of women they had personally tormented. Relax, they said, you had company—it wasn’t only you. The women Kenny stopped kissing, the women Geoffrey had sworn off, the wives whom Emile had parked all over Brooklyn and upstate New York. How could anyone think it consoled you—membership in this group?
Kenny got up and went to the bureau and pulled a white T-shirt over his head. His face reappeared with the guileless, washed-clean grin of a kid. He said, “Let’s just erase what happened today. We can rewind the tape and rerecord over what went down.”
He put on his socks and high-top black sneakers. He got his jacket and car keys: Simone’s signal to leave.
He said, “Christmas dinner at Rosemary’s could be a fairly insane proposition.”
EVERYONE SEEMED TO UNDERSTAND that this was a dangerous season. In one magazine a panel of ministers and psychologists sagely advised their readers on how to prevent holiday dynamite from detonating in their lives. A psychiatrist described past grievances and hurts as destructive presents family members bring to family occasions. The secret, he said, was learning to leave those explosive packages home.
Every culture, thought Simone, had its unhealthy times. Haitians feared certain saints’ eves and nights of the full moon and, more recently, election eves and days after demonstrations. The Mayas, she’d read, had periods when no one left the house. How safe it would be to live like that, everyone knowing the risks. If you forgot and started out the door, someone was sure to stop you.
Despite the magazines that Simone left scattered around to warn her, Rosemary blithely insisted that, for Maisie and George, Christmas Eve at their father’s and Christmas Day at home would simply double their portion of holiday joy. But perhaps she, too, secretly realized that Christmas was mined for disaster. Why else did she keep complaining about how the Holy Nativity provided no preparation or guidance for this era of child support and split-custody arrangements? She said, “Maybe the myth would still apply if the Church acknowledged its complications—as a parenting situation, Mary and Joseph and God were genuinely avant-garde. But instead of admitting this, they keep trying to convince us that Mary, Joseph, and Jesus were the parthenogenetic Father Knows Best.”
As she ransacked the attic for the Christmas decorations that she was becoming increasingly, hysterically certain Geoffrey must have taken, Rosemary seemed more than ever like a newly hatched creature, a feathery duckling emerging from the sticky fur of her mout
on coat. It was painful to watch her ripping open boxes, searching for lights and baubles that had been in the family for ages. Each year, she said, Geoffrey had supervised the children in the hanging of the ornaments with an anal-compulsive methodicalness that precluded creativity or fun and so reminded Rosemary of Geoffrey’s mother that there were several Christmas Eves when she’d run screaming from the house.
Near the eyeless colonial paintings was a large portrait of a matronly woman in long gloves and an evening gown. Could she have been Geoffrey’s mother? It was hard to tell—the portrait had been turned upside down and its eyes had been cut out. Simone could hardly believe that only one short season had passed since that hot afternoon she first came up here with Rosemary. Those few months seemed longer than her whole life up until now.
Puffs of mildew wafted up as Rosemary tore through a steamer trunk. She said, “I paid my dues in this attic. When the children were little and they’d nap, I’d come up here and look through the stuff. That is how I got to know how sick these people were. The unspeakable things they stashed for someone to find after they were gone—human-hair wreaths, slices of wedding cake under glass, the handkerchief that Uncle Ebenezer spit up into on his deathbed. Of course they never imagined they’d ever die—otherwise, how could they have kept it?
“I was fascinated, I’d spend hours here, very voyeuristic. I see now that it was the closest I came to a creative state. Then one day I woke up and realized that seven years had gone by.
“My first idea was to make junk sculpture from the things in the house. But I knew that getting Geoffrey to part with one tiny scrap would be like convincing him to donate a testicle to science. I can’t imagine who I was before I did my art, when my entire existence was this house and the children, and I hunkered here like a monkey, pawing through someone else’s stuff.”
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