As she spoke she gazed at me boldly, unblinkingly, as if daring me to behold her new features.
I found myself turning away. It was involuntary. But I couldn’t look at her. I couldn’t. I just couldn’t.
“We were like children,” she said. “Playing games.”
“We took turns.”
“I was bad.”
“But when you were good…”
We both laughed.
Silence.
“I guess some good came of it,” she said.
“Like what?”
“I’ve come to appreciate…certain things. You realize, of course, I’ll always be confined.”
“You mean you’ll never leave the house?”
“Eli – LOOK AT ME!”
Up to then we had been rolling along.
“I’m looking.”
“No you’re not. Eli, when I look in the mirror I wish I were dead.”
I tried a joke. “So don’t look in the mirror.”
“But you would have to look at me, if you meant what you said.”
What had I said?
“Do you remember what you said?”
I wasn’t playing dumb.
“In the letter. MARRY ME, you said. Do you still want to marry me?”
“Yes I do.”
I didn’t say it with much conviction because I didn’t know how I felt, or maybe I did and didn’t like what I was feeling. I was tired. Suddenly I was tired. I just wanted to go to sleep. I knew it wouldn’t be easy but I never thought it would be as tough as this. It wasn’t tough, it was impossible. There wasn’t even a vestige of her original self, not even a hint of the Stephanie that I had loved, adored. I tried to conjure her up as she had been that first day, the day of the interview, and it did come to me but quickly faded as the shadow of a passing bird.
She gathered up her purse and walked to the door.
“I do love you,” I said, as something from memory.
“I knew it would be like this,” she said, walking back.
I found my mind drifting. I wanted to watch a ballgame. There was a game on this afternoon and I had been looking forward to it, pointing to it, as I’d been doing ever since I left Harry’s Carpet City and discovered all this free time, with nothing to point to, except the ballgames.
I didn’t want to get her out of my apartment as much as I wanted to get myself the hell out. I wanted to breathe some air. Go to New York. Be with Maishe. Be with anybody else. The walls were closing in. Stephanie was closing in. Stephanie? This was Stephanie?
THIS WAS STEPHANIE?
“I don’t know what more I can say,” I said.
“I know you Eli. I know you’re trying. I expected you to try. But I’m not your rich beautiful girl anymore.”
I shrugged.
“Am I? Oh I’m still rich…”
“You’re still…”
I was about to say “beautiful” but she wasn’t stupid. No, she was very smart.
Maishe had told me to live with the dream. If I had been smart that would have been enough.
I should have gone with him to New York. Forget Cincinnati. Forget Stephanie.
Now I couldn’t forget.
I’d always remember this.
“I’ll always love you,” she said.
If there was one thing I couldn’t stand it was lines like that.
“I’m leaving,” she said.
I couldn’t wait.
“Don’t,” I said.
“But you want me to.”
I was feeling very sleepy again. I wanted to get under the covers and go to sleep. I always put myself to sleep by dreaming about Stephanie. Now what? Could I erase what I had just seen and if I could, what would I use to replace her? There had been nobody even close.
“Stay as long as you want.”
She chuckled. “Have I changed that much? You can’t wait to get rid of me. Eli…”
“I guess I’m just tired.”
You imagine the dramatic moments of your life, none as sweet as the reunion with an old flame, and does it ever turn out according to plan? Like in the movies? Never. This? This was the biggest failure of all. A flop.
“So will you be going to New York?”
“I don’t know. I guess. I don’t know.”
“You don’t have a job.”
“I know.”
“I can’t believe they let Fat Jack go. I liked him so much.”
“It was just a job.”
“That’s where we met.”
She didn’t say that sentimentally. She wasn’t being sentimental at all. Just stating facts. Reviewing our past. Something you tended to do when you knew there’d be no future. Every now and then there’d be a glimmer of the old Stephanie, the headstrong, self-assured Stephanie, aglow from the fullness of youth, wealth and beauty. But it was only a flicker, in her eyes, if you caught it in time, a flicker, no flame.
You tried to conjure up the magic that had been, force it through.
“I think you ought to know why I’ve rejected plastic surgery. It was explained to me that my face would be pulled in so many different directions that after a while, perhaps five years, it would all cave in, and be even worse than it is now. That was my choice, Eli. In case you were wondering.”
“No I wasn’t.”
“I’ve seen people with plastic surgery…”
“So have I.”
“Looks wonderful the first year…”
“I don’t blame you. You made the right decision.”
Her lower lip began to quiver. “Would it be asking too much…I mean you’re being so…unemotional.”
“You know I don’t cry.”
“But detached?”
“I’m not detached.”
“Would it be asking too much…for you…before I go…to make love to me?”
I said nothing.
“You know I’m still a virgin.”
“No, I didn’t know.”
“You thought I lost it in California.”
“I did.”
“Well I didn’t. I was saving it for you. Sounds silly, doesn’t it?”
“Sounds nice.”
“I mean that ANY woman would save herself…I mean that’s so old-fashioned.”
“But nothing to regret.”
“Oh? I don’t know about that.”
“You think you’re missing that much?”
“I don’t know. That’s the point. Am I?”
“I don’t think so. Sex is the most overrated thing.”
“And you would know, wouldn’t you.”
“It’s no great thing, Stephanie. It’s all Hollywood.”
“Has it occurred to you that I may never know what it’s like?”
“But I just told you what it’s like.”
She laughed. “You’re being funny. You’re still funny. That guy in California meant nothing to me, you know. I guess I was just trying to make you jealous. I was trying to hurt you. There’s never been anyone but you, Eli.”
“Same here.”
“But not anymore. Is that right?”
“I didn’t say that.”
“No, but you’re not saying anything else, either. You’re being very distant.”
“Detached, right?”
“How can I make you love me again?”
Maybe it was a bit melodramatic but it was the heart of the matter, a question I’d been asking myself from the minute I caught my first glimpse of her today. How could I love her again? Would I have to MAKE myself love her? You couldn’t FORCE yourself to love somebody, could you? If I didn’t love her anymore, what kind of person was I? Hadn’t I said that looks meant nothing to me? Especially where she was concerned?
But there it was. No truth about her. But a truth about me.
Sonja had shown the inside of ME.
That’s whom she exposed.
She knew her work, Sonja did. She wasn’t crazy at all. She was a pro.
Hadn’t she been right when she
said there were worse things than death?
Had she killed Stephanie it would have been a FAVOR.
She was no nut, Sonja. She was smarter than all the rest of us. All the nuts were.
“I wish you’d say something,” Stephanie said.
If there was one thing I was starting to resent it was conversation. Talk, talk, talk. Especially conversations like this, when all you were doing was giving out lines, since everything was understood. She understood exactly how I felt and vice versa, so why talk? If it were up to me people would stop talking altogether. There was nothing to say anymore. You’d think after thousands of years here on earth we’d have it all straightened out by now.
“We used to have such lovely conversations,” she said. “Can I expect even that much?”
“Always.”
“But nothing more?”
She wasn’t being weepy. Very straightforward.
“To be honest,” I said… “to be honest…”
“Yes, please, let’s be honest.”
“It’s been a shock,” I said.
“You think I don’t know that, Eli? You think I haven’t rehearsed this a thousand times in my mind? Do you know what it took to get me to come here? I knew precisely how you’d react. Thankfully, you spared me all the usual sentiments. For that I’m grateful. I knew you would spare me the pity and any phony declarations of undying love. You came through on that, but all this reserve…I guess I was hoping…hoping you’d see me as I used to be. I guess I was hoping you’d see me as WE used to be. I guess I was hoping…oh, Eli. Eli.”
I stuffed tobacco in my pipe and lit up and stretched my legs.
“I was thinking you’d get used to this,” she said, pointing to her face. “In time.”
She said if I insisted that she’d undergo plastic surgery, restoration they called it, she’d do it, for me.
“No,” I said.
“No what?”
“You’re fine the way you are.”
She chuckled.
“So what do you want me to do?”
“I don’t know.”
“You mean there’s nothing left.”
“I didn’t say that,” I said.
“Are you angry?”
“Yes.”
“At me?”
“Of course not. At…everything.”
“Well I’m not angry anymore. I’ve gotten over the anger.”
“I know. But I haven’t.”
“It’s too late to be angry,” she said.
“I’ll get over it, I’m sure.”
She laughed. “Aren’t we something. Always something coming between us. As though fate…and who would have thought of this? Mind if I stay the afternoon? I’ll just stay here quietly and watch the ballgame with you.”
Which she did, and it was very peaceful. We didn’t talk much. Just sat and watched the ballgame, and I WAS starting to get used to her and remember her. I thought of the many times before when I would have given my life just to spend such a peaceful afternoon together. It never worked out when she was the vivacious highflying Stephanie. We were always performing for one another, jousting, taking turns at being cool. But now it was peaceful between us. The heat was gone. I had meant it when I had said we were in love TOO MUCH. Yes there was such a thing as too much. It got to be overwhelming. We couldn’t handle it or at least I certainly couldn’t. Now it was different, now that we were brought down, both brought down by the same thing. Loving her had been the same as pain, hurting all the time. I had wondered how it would end, the pain. I always wondered how it would end.
At night we sent out for pizza. The delivery boy gave her a double-take. I tried not to notice.
Why had she shown herself to him?
She said she did it on purpose, to show me the worst of what would be in store. “For a lifetime,” she said.
After we ate pizza I fell asleep on the couch. I felt her put a cover over me before I drifted off. I got up several hours later and she was gone.
I felt empty. I felt sad and sick and empty.
Then I looked outside. It was dark. Her car was still there. I walked out into the hallway and she was standing there, shivering. I put my arms around her and held her for a very long time. Then I brought her inside and took her clothes off.
We made love.
Before she drifted off she said it was the first time she felt sleepy ever since it happened.
“Shh,” I said and stroked her hair.
I watched her sleep, so peaceful.
I figured never mind this lifetime business. One great year. Maybe together we had that one great year ahead of us.
The Girls of Cincinnati Page 17