City Boy
Page 33
“I don’t understand. You have so much talent. You really do, I hope you don’t think I’m saying that for some devious reason.”
“Talent’s only part of writing. It’s either something you have in you or you don’t.”
Jack didn’t offer anything else, and after a moment Chloe said, “Well …”
He pressed the elevator’s call button. Chloe waited with him, and when the car came she gave him a kiss on the cheek and said, Take care, and Jack said, You too, and he stepped inside and the door closed and he rode down twelve floors, down and down and down, wishing he could lift himself up with some ironic, buoyant thought. Chloe was what he’d had inside him. She’d been the only extraordinary thing about him. His outsized love and outsized fury. Now he would be like anyone else, shrunk down to normal, made up of itches and exasperations and, in time, he supposed, his share of some purely normal happiness.
He took a cab back to the garage where he’d left his rental car. The lawyer was expecting him, but Jack thought they’d both be relieved if he didn’t show up. Instead he drove north, past all the landmarks and intersections he’d taken care to learn so that he could feel he truly lived here. It was the first time he’d seen his old street, his block, in winter weather. The curbs were heaped and churned with old snow that in places had turned the color of Coca-Cola. To park, you let the frozen tracks grab hold of your tires and slide you into a space. Every car was scummed with layers of dried salt.
He had to park two blocks away. The wind made his eyes and nose stream. The Hawk, that was the name people gave to the Chicago wind. Someone told him that, way back when he’d first arrived at Northwestern. And he’d made a point of remembering it, working it into conversation. But did anyone still say it? He wasn’t sure. Maybe it was outdated even back then, a piece of old slang that only reached someone like him when it was already used up. No matter how he’d tried, he had never really belonged here.
The heat had been turned down in the apartment. Nothing was untidy or out of place, but the cold made it unwelcoming. Chloe had cleared out her closet and desk and other items Jack had to remember by their absence. The Monet water lilies were gone, and the area rugs. She’d left the TV and VCR and stereo. He assumed that Spence had better ones.
Jack set to work. He made a pile of the winter clothing he would no longer need, set it aside for Goodwill. He disassembled the computer and stereo components. He’d have to call the lawyer and find out which one of them owned the furniture. Tomorrow he’d come back with movers, have them box up his books and anything else he wanted to ship. He hauled bags of unwanted things out to the trash. The backyard was full of oddly shaped snow-covered lumps, like the bodies of Arctic explorers.
He was sorting through the bathroom shelves when he heard, unmistakably, the sound of a baby crying from upstairs. It went on for a time, then ceased. Someone flushed a toilet overhead.
Jack went out into the lobby. He’d assumed that Brezak wasn’t home, and counted himself lucky. Now he saw that new names were on Brezak’s mailbox. J. DESOTO, M. DESOTO. A nice young couple with a baby.
So Brezak had gone, or maybe he’d finally been thrown out, and was living his dirty, disorganized life somewhere else. Jack had to remind himself that these were rentals, he shouldn’t be surprised when people moved on. Piece by piece his own life here would be erased. He wondered if Ivory had made it to Florida, if she was on a beach with the hot sun freckling her skin, rubbing suntan lotion on her withered leg, daring people to stare. He knew this was a sentimental thought and she deserved better from him. She had made it possible for him to imagine the different shapes and ways of loving, its cruelties and extravagances, how someone might desire men and women equally, or reach the very end point of desire.
Someone named Rogers had taken over Mr. Dandy’s apartment. Jack and Chloe’s names were still on their mailbox. Jack used his key to open it, pulled out some old pizza flyers. They were damp and shredded, as if something had been making a nest in there. Mrs. Lacagnina’s name was still in place. Who would have thought she’d outlast everyone else.
Jack had pulled his car up to the front door to load suitcases when Mrs. Lacagnina herself came out, dragging her grocery cart. Jack waved. He wondered if she’d find it strange that he’d returned, then he wondered if she’d even noticed he was gone.
Mrs. Lacagnina didn’t wave back. She stared at him with no sign of recognition, but Jack thought her face might be so hardened by age and deafness that it no longer recorded actual expressions. Jack opened the passenger door of the car, tried to convey his willingness to escort her to the grocery. He wanted to believe that in spite of everything, he might still be a person who was kind to old ladies.
Mrs. Lacagnina regarded Jack, then surveyed the sidewalk between her and the corner. It was only haphazardly shoveled, with a layer of glaze that could send you straight to the nursing home with a broken hip. Mrs. Lacagnina allowed Jack to help her over the snowy curb and into the car. He put the grocery trolley in the backseat and took his place behind the wheel.
Mrs. Lacagnina’s feet, in black galoshes that reminded Jack of pony hooves, were exactly level with the floor mats. She had a new coat—her daughter must have argued mightily to get the old one off her back—with fur at the cuffs and collar, but she still wore the same fringed headscarf knotted beneath her chin. He imagined her heart keeping its own stubborn, syncopated time. She stared straight ahead as if Jack were a chauffeur.
A new problem presented itself. Did Mrs. Lacagnina shop at the Jewel, which was closest, or the Dominick’s, a little farther on, or at some ancient corner store known only to Sicilian widows? How could you hope to pantomime the range of choices? There was nothing in the car to write with. Jack raised a hand to flag her attention, and when she turned to him he did his best to convey Where to?, quizzical eyebrows, shoulders up, hands agitating the steering wheel.
Mrs. Lacagnina gave him back a series of signals he did not understand, since none of them seemed to convey the name of a grocery chain. He shook his head, and Mrs. Lacagnina repeated herself, a bit of animation, even of theatrical disbelief, entering into her performance: What’s the matter, Mr. Handsome, is the only part of that head you ever use the outside? When she showed him for the third time he finally got it. The vast horizon, the skipping waves, the hand to her heart, the sign of the cross.
On the way he stopped and got them both coffee, guessing she took hers black and sweet. She held her cup carefully in her gloved hands. Jack drove to Hollywood Beach, nudged the nose of the rental car past the leavings of the snowplows, as close as he could get to the beach and the lake itself. Even on a day like this there were a few underdressed-looking joggers bounding along on the walking path, exhaling frozen clouds. Wind shook the car and sent waves thick with ice slapping against the concrete seawall.
Farther out, the lake had a gloss to it from the low winter sun, a path of watery shine. Mrs. Lacagnina settled herself into her fur collar, lifted her coffee to her lips but didn’t drink. She seemed content to sit there in the small space of comfort that the car provided, and Jack thought they might stay there awhile longer. He would have liked to ask about her husband. He would have liked to tell her about Chloe. It was the same story, really, for both of them. One day a boat went out on the water and never returned. And all you would have to do was write it down.
About the Author
JEAN THOMPSON is the author of Who Do You Love, a 1999 National Book Award finalist for fiction, and Wide Blue Yonder, a New York Times Notable Book for 2002. A recipient of fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Guggenheim Foundation, she lives in Urbana, Illinois.
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