by Rita Ciresi
“Flip the locks.”
“But you don’t look well.”
“Please let me go, Strauss.”
He popped the locks and his voice was officious when he said, “I’ll bring your bag upstairs.”
“I can carry it myself,” I said.
I heard the locks pop back down again. I gasped. “Open the door, and I’m not saying please this time!”
“Goddammit, Lisar, you’re not going anywhere until you tell me why you’re being so stubborn.”
“Because you always want to do everything for me!”
“Maybe it’s because I care for you. I just told you I love you!”
“What kind of way was that?—telling me you doubted it and fought it—and admitting it like it was some kind of sin! Or a crime, because you can’t control it or walk it upstairs like my suitcase! Why did you say don’t say anything just now? What if I wanted to say I loved you back?”
“Then you would have said it, wouldn’t you? You’re not exactly one to hold your tongue.”
“I have been holding my tongue for weeks.”
“How? By describing this weekend—right to my face—as boinking your boss? And writing—behind my back—a novel that pokes fun at our relationship?”
“You haven’t read my novel! How do you know you’re even a character in it?”
“Because you told me I was, remember?”
“How do you know my novel isn’t about love—”
“Because you gave it a pornographic title!”
“So what? Fucking and love can go together—sometimes at least!”
“That’s nice to know, Lisar. Save that line, why don’t you, for that thunderously dumb guy in your book who has such trouble expressing his feelings!”
I looked out the window and thought this was a strange kind of love that kept us sitting in a parked car hurling insults at each other like a couple of bored kids lighting cherry bombs on Independence Day. Strauss popped the locks, reached under the dash, and pulled the lever that opened the trunk. I got out of the car and tried not to slam the door. My suitcase was incredibly heavy, which I felt compelled to blame on him. I told myself I wouldn’t have needed half my makeup—and the shoes and the clothes—if he didn’t make me feel so concerned about the way I looked. But was he that concerned? Or had I just projected all my own concerns onto him?
It was too complicated to think of “Fuck it!” I muttered, and tried not to slap down the trunk, but it didn’t close and I had to push on it with two hands. The Audi shook from the resulting slam.
I dragged the suitcase around to the driver’s side and tapped on the window. He reached for the button and opened it halfway—not enough for me to lean in and kiss him, had I been so inclined, which needless to say, I wasn’t.
“Will you be in at all tomorrow?” I asked.
He shook his head.
“But you’ll call me?” I asked.
“Of course. I always call you. But maybe you think that’s controlling too.”
“I don’t.”
“I believe you do.”
“Please,” I said. “Stop this. You’re misconstruing everything I say. It’s all Hook’s fault. You’re upset and I’m upset, about Hook seeing us—”
“That was inevitable. We can’t keep it a secret forever.”
“Let me think about what you said. About talking to Peg. I want to do the right thing.”
“So do I,” Strauss said. “Just remember it’s better to take hold of the situation before it takes hold of you.”
“Maybe he won’t say anything.”
“Don’t count on it.”
I put my hand through the window, knowing Strauss would have to take it. “Thank you. For the weekend—”
He shook his head to cut me off. Our hands clasped for a moment, then broke apart. He pressed the button to roll up the window, then changed his mind and rolled the window back down.
“I know you have that tie of mine,” he said quietly.
I smiled. “So what if I do?”
“Keep it. For now.”
“Can I wear it?”
“It wouldn’t become you.”
His voice sounded so sad I immediately put my hand to the gold chain around my neck. “This does. Thank you. I won’t take it off”
Finally, he smiled. He nodded. “Now get out of here before I run you over with the car.”
“But I haven’t told you I loved you yet,” I started to say. But he already had closed the window and was revving up the engine. I didn’t look back when I hauled my suitcase and dress bag up the stairwell, but I knew he was waiting there—like he always did—the proverbial good boy your mother always wanted you to date, who waited to make sure you got in all right before he drove off.
Fortunately I made it upstairs without blubbering like a baby. Once I got past my dead—bolt locks I knew I wouldn’t even stop to do the usual routine after being away for the weekend—pee and read the mail after checking my apartment to see if a serial murderer was lying in wait in the closet. I planned to collapse on the couch and cry my eyes out for a reason I couldn’t determine.
But right after I came in the door, I saw the red light on my answering machine flashing twice, and out of curiosity I picked it up. The first message was from the public library; one of the novels I had checked out had been recalled. The second message was from Dodie. “Hey, Lise. Just checking in. Give me a call whenever.”
Whenever, I decided, would be right now. But it had been so long since I’d phoned Dodie that I couldn’t remember if his number ended with two-five or five—two. I actually had to look it up in my address book.
Dodie’s voice was high and rushed when he answered, and I was relieved I hadn’t arranged a meeting between him and Strauss. He sounded coked up.
“I’m interrupting something,” I said.
“Not at all.”
“You have company.”
“I do. I do.”
“I’ll get off. Call me back when you have time.”
“You okay?”
“Sure,” I said. “I just need some cheering up, that’s all.”
“Come see me—see us—next weekend.”
“Who’s us?”
“He’s sitting right here. And he’s a sight to behold.”
“I’ll pass.”
“No, come. And bring your beau too.”
“I think I’d better come solo.”
“Uh—oh,” Dodie said. “I was afraid of that. Did you get into a fight?”
“He just threatened to run me over with his car.”
“So when are you getting married?”
“I’ll bring a bottle of Mumm’s if he proposes between now and then.”
Dodie’s friend had a house just beyond Bay Shore. The friend also had a boat, and I was invited to sleep on board.
“Don’t tell me,” I said. “It’s a rowboat.”
“No, no, no.”
“A canoe.”
“Nope.”
“An air mattress.”
Dodie laughed slyly. “It’s a yacht. The size of a ranch house in Rye.”
“You slut,” I said. “I’ll be there.”
Chapter Eleven
Then the Girls Could Rule the Sea
My brief visit home to meet the latest Al Dante began with a fight with my mother, who rightly claimed I shouldn’t just show up on her doorstep without warning (to which I replied, So get an answering machine. I will buy you an answering machine!), and ended with Mama making me a ginger-ale ice-cream float—as if I were a teenager stuck in bed with bad menstrual cramps on the night of the prom. Mama’s generosity was inspired by the inexplicable tears I shed after I handed Junior back to Carol.
“You don’t have to feel sorry for me,” I told Mama as she pulled out the store-brand ice cream and the generic ginger ale.
“Who feels for you?” Mama said. “I want one of these sodas myself. Madonna, I meant to take some straws from the Wawa market last time I w
alked past—go call Auntie Beppina and ask to borrow a couple. Tell her I’ll bring ’em back after church—”
“Mama, straws are like Kleenex—you don’t borrow them, you use them and chuck ’em in the trash.”
“Like Carol—with those disposed diapers! In my day, hot water and a washboard. Never would you even dream of throwing nothing out.”
Walking through the back door of Boorman on Wednesday, I felt off—kilter. But my lack of balance had nothing to do with my heel height. I felt like I was in junior high school again and one of my worst enemies had ratted to the teacher that I had let a boy paw me in the janitor’s closet. Any minute I expected the intercom to crackle and the office secretary to announce to the delight of the entire algebra class: Elisabetta Diodetto: Report at once to the principal’s office!
Nothing happened, of course. I rearranged my paper clips, reloaded my stapler, and business proceeded as usual. But the thought that something evil was beginning to brew left me feeling so weak in the knees I actually welcomed, at the end of the day, the smarmy voice of Hook Roberts calling out to me in the parking lot.
“Hello, Miss D.!”
I turned. His car—a royal blue Camaro—was parked one row back from mine.
“Hi there,” I said, and started raking through my purse to find my car keys.
He came over to my Toyota. “We seem to be bumping into each other a lot.”
“Oh,” I said. “I wouldn’t say a lot.”
He gave a quick glance over his shoulder. “Enjoy New York?”
“Was I in New York?”
“Funny, I was sure that was you I saw. With a traveling companion.”
“What traveling companion?”
Hook smiled. “Am I reading this right? I didn’t see you guys over the weekend, even though you saw me?”
I hesitated and looked over in the executive lot, where I pictured Strauss’s Audi—subtle and silver and dependable—sitting there as a warning, which of course I did not heed.
“I think you might be reading that right,” I told Hook.
“Mum’s the word then, Lisa.”
“I certainly hope so,” I said, racking my brains for a way to win him over. He seemed fool enough to fall for a little flirtation, so I stepped in closer, gave him my best Miss America smile, and asked how he had enjoyed his wedding.
“It was the usual folderol.”
“Why did your friends get married on a Sunday?”
“Not friends. A cousin. On my wife’s side. And that’s exactly what I said to Lorraine when the invitation came. I said, who’s this girl marrying, a Hindu? What’s on the menu at the reception, chicken vindaloo?”
Here was a thunderously dumb guy if ever one was invented, I thought.
He kept on going. “But these kids were Catholic all the way. Just had trouble booking on the right day of the week.” He winked. “Shotgun wedding.”
“So that explained her hoop dress—”
“Ha! Did you get a load of that dress in the lobby? I said to Lorraine, you can hide a lot of belly under a hoopskirt like that. I said to her, just think of what a huge market that must be, wedding gowns for girls who say their vows for two—but you’ve probably never seen an ad for that in Modern Bride magazine.”
“I don’t subscribe to that particular publication.”
“You could stay up all night just thinking of the challenges involved in that ad campaign.”
“I’ll leave that to you,” I said. “Since I like to get a good night’s sleep.”
He grinned. “I’m sure you do.”
I held his smile—for a moment—with my own clenched smile. Then I turned my key in the car lock. I pulled on the lever, but the door didn’t open.
“You just shut yourself out,” Hook said.
“Funny,” I said. “I must have forgotten to lock it this morning.”
“Make sure you look in the backseat.”
“Excuse me?”
“The backseat. That’s where men up to no good are supposed to be hiding.”
I opened the door without looking in.
“Before you go,” Hook said, “I have some new projects coming up. Might need some help on your end.”
“Sounds good,” I said. “Clear it with Peggy. I mean, Dr. Schoenbarger.”
“Not someone else? Who shall remain nameless?”
“Dr. Schoenbarger,” I repeated.
“Oh, excuse me. Being new and all, it may take a while to figure out the chain of command.”
“I’m sure you’ll master it,” I said, and got into my car. It was all I could do to keep myself from backing out right into him and breaking his sturdy state-trooperlike legs.
Strauss called later that evening. After some stilted conversation about holdups at the Atlanta airport, he asked me to report my take on the situation at work.
“No one seems to know.”
“Did you see Hook today?”
“He stopped me in the parking lot.”
“Christ.”
“He said he wouldn’t say anything. About seeing us.”
“How did he say it?”
I gave Strauss a sanitized account of my exchange with Hook.
“The man’s a snake in the grass, Lisar. I’m talking to Peg when I come back.”
“I don’t like the idea of you talking about me with her,” I said.
“We could make it a three-way conversation.”
“What a nightmare!”
“I could do most of the talking.”
I knew too well he could. “I’d rather speak for myself.”
“Together or separately?”
“Wait. I didn’t tell you yes to either. You said I had until Monday.”
“Monday, then. No later.” I bristled until he added, a half second later, a polite please. “Did you speak to Karen today?” he asked.
“She hasn’t had her baby.”
“I’m more interested in her husband.”
“He has very white teeth.”
There was a silence.
“Strauss,” I finally said, “you’re the only person I know who can brood—audibly—over the telephone. Lighten up.”
“All right. How was your visit home?”
“The usual. Except for the baby. I love the baby.”
“Of course.” He cleared his throat. “When you went home—were you able to talk to anyone? About anything important?”
“How could I talk? What could I say? Everybody was busy fussing over Junior. I didn’t want to steal my sister’s thunder.”
“How is it stealing your sister’s thunder to simply say you’ve met someone?”
Because I’d have to say your name and explain who you are, I felt like telling him, and best be sure your P.J. brother-in-law isn’t the only one who’d raise a few fireworks over that.
“My mother made me an ice-cream float,” I said. “Like I was a kid sick in bed.”
“What you’re trying to say, maybe, is that your family wouldn’t be well-disposed to our relationship?”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” I blurted out. “My mother’s so desperate for me to get married, anything in pants will do.”
Was the silence that followed that remark censorious or amused? “I’m getting off the phone now,” I said, and did.
He called me back ten seconds later. “That’s useful information,” he said, and returned the favor of hanging up in my face.
The next weekend on the hot drive down to Long Island, I didn’t know which I missed most: air-conditioning or a tape deck or just a rubber band to pull back my tangled hair. With all the windows down, my humidified curls whipped around my head. My shorts and shirt were drenched with sweat, and my ears hurt from the roar of passing eighteen-wheelers. My boom box, which I strapped into the passenger seat with the safety belt, could hardly project over the constant sound of the traffic. The speakers warbled in and out and the highest notes vibrated.
I had every intention of giving, for the first time, an
intellectual ear to Benjamin Britten’s take on The Turn of the Screw, which I had purchased half price at Tower. But after ten minutes I was bored and irritated by the wild swings of the overture, the incoherence of each aria, the too-trained voices that seemed to mock the listener, who had no idea where the next phrase would go. That the opera was sung in English, not Italian, also got on my nerves. I thought of Rigoletto. Verdi’s glorious version of the travails of a bitter hunchback was proof that no good ever came from secrets. The Turn of the Screw, maybe, was a cautionary tale that a woman should never get too hot and bothered over a guy, especially when he was a dead man. With my eyes still on the road, I reached over to my boom box, popped out the Benjamin Britten, and put in some Beatles. Songs like “Love Me Do” and “Paperback Writer” seemed to take me even faster to the beach.
The community where Dodie’s friend lived was called Shore Line. Two lefts after the entrance, Dodie had said, then take a right toward the water and continue down the road for a mile until you reach a sign that says North Lagoon. But the roads were circular and forked off one another. I got lost in a tangle of pine trees and houses with slanted roofs whose interiors probably looked like something out of Architectural Digest. In the winding driveways sat Jags and BMWs and some Italian-looking sports cars I couldn’t even begin to identify. I couldn’t help it: Suddenly I heard Strauss’s voice—quiet and wry, describing his former classmates at Harvard as obscenely wealthy—and I came to the conclusion that Dodie had been bought. Then I tried to erase this impression.
No can do, Lisa.
Well? I thought to myself. So what if Dodie was going out with someone who was rolling in it—no, wallowing in it? Didn’t Strauss have a lot of money, even if he didn’t flash it? And didn’t Dodie work for nothing but obscenely wealthy people, every day? If anything, I should have been surprised he hadn’t gotten caught up with one of them before this.
All week long—when I wasn’t stewing about my problems with Strauss and Boorman, and waiting for Karen to give me more news—I’d been thinking about Dodie’s latest. At times Dodie and I had discussed, probably too frankly, our relationships with others. We knew their names and professions and salaries, their tastes in music and literature, their faults and bad habits, and their relative worth in bed. Just as I knew that Dodie had never dated anyone taller than him—which, because he was all of five foot eight, severely limited the field—I also knew that his friends were always younger than him. The one I got to know best, of course, was George, who had a slight build, a soft voice, and an insider’s knowledge of where to buy saffron for a great price. I had met maybe half a dozen other friends—who seemed puzzled, but tolerant, of my presence in Dodie’s life—but I always had kept the image of George in my mind when I wanted to picture Dodie’s lovers, probably because it was an image I felt comfortable with.