by Ann Packer
“Oh, you know—herringbone parquet floors, wall-to-wall windows that never get washed on the outside, completely featureless interior. Sometimes I think these buildings were built to institutionalize ugliness—God forbid a postwar building should have any character.”
“So why do you live there?” Simon asked.
“I like the enforced anonymity.”
“That would be hard to give up.”
Kilroy gave Simon an amused nod, but he crossed his arms over his chest, and some kind of inner turbulence seeped out of him. What was going on? What had happened to his mood? An edgy silence filled the room, and for a long moment no one spoke.
“Well, anyway,” Simon said. “Carrie, this party. Perrier Jouet, and I mean cases. Waiters passing little smoked salmon dealies, tiny filo pastries, et cetera. Flowers like you wouldn’t believe, I swear there was this one doorway with a lilac tree growing in a kind of arch around it—white lilacs, in October. And Mr. Kolodny was going around to all of Jason’s friends saying, ‘Please come visit us in Aspen,’ ‘Please come visit us on Block Island.’ ”
“He’s in the Forbes Four Hundred,” Greg said, and Kilroy gave him a look of disdain.
“You mean he has a lot of money?”
“Well, yeah,” Greg said, glancing at me and Simon. “Obviously.”
“Like hundreds of thousands?”
“Like millions and millions,” Greg exclaimed. “Jason used to get driven up to school in a limousine.”
“Really?” Kilroy said. “Was it by chance a stretch limousine?”
Greg blushed. After a moment he put his hands in his pockets, then pulled them out again.
“Well,” Simon said. “On that note, I think I’ll go watch TV.” He made a face, a sort of ironically freaked-out face that was meant to say he actually was freaked out, and then he left the kitchen.
My face was burning. I bent over the sewing machine and lowered the needle into the fabric. Poor Greg—he’d never been anything but nice to me, and now my boyfriend was making him look like a fool. What was Kilroy’s problem? Was it Greg, or the subject of people with money? I’d noticed something like this before. “When you’re driving a Range Rover you’re entitled to double park on West Broadway,” he’d scoffed one day; on another, making fun of a huffy man in a store, it was “ ‘How dare you keep me waiting—can’t you tell by my shoes that I could pay your salary ten times over and not even feel it?’ ” It wasn’t only envy, I didn’t think—people like this got under his skin, they bugged him. Maybe it wasn’t envy at all. He lived very frugally, took pride in buying the cheapest beer available, in inconveniencing himself to get to an early-bird matinee when all he’d be saving was two or three bucks, yet there were signs that he had more money than he otherwise seemed to: a cashmere overcoat in his closet, the time he took me to a Japanese restaurant and casually dropped a hundred dollars so I could try sushi. It was as if he were frugal not by need but to make a point, the same point made by the inward frugality that kept his walls empty of pictures, his floors bare. It was a frugality that said: I don’t need anything.
And I wondered: where did that leave me?
Greg came and stood beside me and looked down at my work. He rested his fingers on the table, and I saw they were shaking slightly. He said, “It’s too bad we don’t have another room for you.”
“I feel pretty lucky to have the alcove.”
“Yeah, but it must be frustrating to know Alice is never even in her room.”
Alice had the room on the other side of the wall from me. I’d only seen her a few times—she spent most of her time at her boyfriend’s place in the East Village.
“I guess I’ll head upstairs, too,” he said. “I didn’t get home from the restaurant until after two last night.”
Kilroy was standing across the room, staring through a window at the dark backyard. He turned around. “You’re a waiter?”
Greg nodded. “Five nights a week.”
“Sounds grueling,” Kilroy said.
“Actually, it is. The whole idea is that I’m working nights so I can go to acting class during the day, or auditions, but I’m so wiped out I end up sleeping all the time.”
Kilroy grinned. “Sounds like a pretty good life.”
Greg gave us a little wave as he headed for the door. “Nice to meet you,” he said to Kilroy as he left, and Kilroy lifted his chin and smiled.
“You, too.”
Alone again with him, I turned back to my sewing. What a strange thing, that little flash of hostility at Greg, and then the attempt to smooth it over. I stitched several inches, and as I worked I felt him move around the table and come to a stop directly behind me. He stood there without speaking while I continued to the end of the seam. I backstitched for a knot and then used the handwheel to raise the needle from the fabric. I pulled the curtain from under the presser foot and began taking out the pins I’d stitched over. All at once, so surprising that I jumped a little, his finger was on the back of my neck. He stroked from my hairline down into the back of my shirt and then did it again. I wanted—I was suddenly desperate—to turn and press my face into his shirt front. The urge was enormous, an electricity activating my muscles, making them want to move. Why had Mike never had this effect on me? I’d felt desire for him, but not this intense need, this wish that felt violent at times, to be against him.
Kilroy’s finger left my neck. He moved back and I heard him pick up the newspaper again. I looked over my shoulder and he glanced up and gave me a benign smile, then went back to reading.
I was working on the channel for the rod a little later when I heard a step and looked up. It was Lane, whose room was on the third floor, too, on the other side of Alice’s. I liked her, but I hadn’t talked to her much—I had the impression that she was shy. She was one of the smallest adults I’d ever seen, barely five feet tall or ninety pounds, with pale skin and wrists like saplings, and wispy, ash blond hair cropped close to her head. The first time I’d seen her, coming out of the third-floor bathroom in striped pajamas, I’d thought she was a little boy.
“Hi,” she said now. “I just got home and I couldn’t go upstairs without coming in here first to see what that noise was.”
I smiled. “Was a sewing machine the last thing you expected?”
“Pretty close. I was torn between a dental drill and a blender.”
“Or maybe just a really big hummingbird,” Kilroy said from his spot against the counter, and Lane laughed her high, thin laugh.
I introduced her to Kilroy, and after they’d said hello she turned back to me. “I’ve never actually seen anyone sew. How do you do it?”
I motioned her over and guided the fabric under the presser foot. “You pretty much just pin and go.” With my foot I felt for the pedal, and then I gave a little demonstration, the needle bobbing up and down as I stitched a few inches. “Didn’t you have to take sewing in high school home ec?”
She shook her head. “I went to one of those progressive schools where you didn’t have to do anything, including attend classes. I don’t think they even offered home ec.”
Kilroy laughed. “High school as self-actualization?”
“Pretty much. There was this thing called Meeting, where whoever wanted to would gather every morning, and if you felt like it you could talk, about anything.”
Kilroy tilted his head. “And this was where?”
“In Connecticut. Seward Hall is the name of the school, but it’s not like that, I think the ‘Hall’ part is to placate the trustees.”
A strange look came over Kilroy’s face. He said, “Actually, there was a big movement led by the trustees to drop the ‘Hall’ and rename the school ‘Seward Country Center,’ and the students fought to keep it Seward Hall.”
Lane grinned. “Did you go there, too?”
He shook his head but didn’t add anything, and Lane glanced at me with a question on her face. “Well, did someone you know?” she asked.
“Someone I kne
w.”
“Who?” she said. “When? It’s such a small place, I—”
“This would’ve been before your time.”
He went back to the newspaper, and she bit her lip and gave me another curious look.
I shrugged. I couldn’t explain it—this was just Kilroy. Mr. Mysterious. Mr. I-don’t-need-anything. But that wasn’t right, was it? He needed me, didn’t he? Or wanted me, anyway? I thought of his tongue on my earlobe, the delicious agony as he slowly, slowly tickled me with it.
I only had a little more work to do. I stood up and went out to the hall, where a narrow little closet held an ironing board and iron, along with an ancient upright vacuum cleaner Simon had told me he’d bought at a flea market because it fit in so well with the kitchen appliances. I wrestled the ironing board out of the closet just as Lane passed by, heading for the staircase. She stopped for a moment and faced me, then seemed to think better of it and headed off again. “Goodnight,” she called over her shoulder.
In the kitchen I stood the ironing board near an outlet, then brought the iron out, plugged it in, and poured a little water into the reservoir.
“You know,” Kilroy said, “I think I’ll head home.”
I was stunned. I was fifteen minutes from finishing, twenty at the most. “I’m almost done,” I said.
“Yeah, but I’m really beat. I’m going to take off.” He hesitated a moment and then nodded, as if in confirmation. He was looking not at me but past me, so I couldn’t tell what this meant for me, whether he wanted me to follow when I was finished, or quit now and go with him, or what. Maybe he was looking past me so I couldn’t tell.
His jacket was draped over a chair, and he crossed the room and pulled it on. He gave me a smile and a wave, said, “See you,” and moved past me to the doorway. I turned and watched as he made his way down the dimly lit hallway, less and less distinct in the growing darkness until he opened the front door and disappeared.
My heart was pounding. I could still feel the place on my neck where he had touched me, all the possibilities that touch had suggested. Our first fight, I thought, but it didn’t seem cute, it seemed incomprehensible. What had even happened? Not a fight. He’d been angry, but not at me. I was angry—at him, for leaving—but more than that I was mystified. Why hadn’t he said the name of the person he’d known who went to Lane’s school? Why say you knew someone and then refuse to say whom? And what about what had happened with Greg?
Once I was done with my work I put everything away and carried my sewing machine back upstairs. I’d hang the curtain tomorrow, once I’d bought a rod. For now I flopped onto the futon. Near my pillow I’d hung a little cardboard-mounted watercolor of a pear that I’d bought from a sidewalk vendor in SoHo. On the vendor’s table it had looked refreshing, a breath of summer, the perfect yellowy green of the pear, but hanging in the alcove it just seemed forlorn—it made the wall look all the dingier. The floor space of the alcove was barely bigger than the futon. I was living in a little beige box. And yet I wasn’t—I hadn’t slept here in almost a week. I thought of Kilroy’s bedroom, his bed, how quickly we had established which side each of us slept on, he on the left and I on the right. It had taken some getting used to, being on the right, because with Mike I’d always slept on the left. When Mike and I lay like spoons with him behind me, it was my right side his arm lay across, my right shoulder he held. For many, many nights of my life, up until five months ago. I remembered what he looked like sleeping, and then what he looked like in the hospital, not-sleeping, unresponsive. I’d never asked him exactly what it had been like to emerge from that. The resumption of consciousness. I’d seen what it had been like, I knew he’d been confused, but what had he thought? What had it meant to recognize himself as not entirely himself—as unable to move? To feel? I’d never simply said Tell me. I hadn’t wanted to know.
Out on the landing there was a telephone with a long cord, and I pulled it into the alcove. It was almost ten, almost nine in Madison. Mrs. Mayer answered, and then stayed absolutely silent once I’d identified myself. I waited a moment, then another, and finally asked how she was.
“Fine,” she said, and then, “I’m fine,” as if I might have thought she’d been speaking for him, too.
“Can I talk to him?”
There was a lot of rustling, and then he came on, saying, “Hi, Carrie,” in a bright voice that made me ache. “How’s it going?” he said. “You haven’t sent me my postcard.”
His postcard, of the Empire State Building. I’d completely forgotten. “God, I’m sorry.”
“Whatever. Do it when you can. So what’s up?”
I looked down at my ring, the stone dull in the dim light of the alcove. Why was I still wearing it? I couldn’t take it off, but I couldn’t say Tell me, either. What could I say? I said, “I was thinking of you.” He was silent, and I added, “I’ve been thinking of you a lot, wondering how you’ve been doing.”
“Not bad,” he said. “Really pretty good. How about you—what have you been up to?”
I hesitated, wanting only to avoid the truth, to avoid Kilroy. “Walking,” I said, and then immediately felt sick, ashamed. Walking? Why not just say Something you can’t do?
“Is it fun?” he said.
I swallowed. “Yeah. It’s like every day I discover some new part of the city I’ve never heard of. The neighborhoods all have these names, like Turtle Bay.”
“Turtle Bay,” he said. “Sounds like a good place not to go swimming.”
“It’s not a real bay.”
He was silent, and after a moment I added, “I’m sorry, Mike. I just wanted to say I’m really sorry.” And then there was more rustling, and his mother came back on.
CHAPTER 20
I woke the next morning feeling disoriented and leaden, guilt and doom returning to me instantly. Trying to fall asleep, I’d spiraled from Mike to Kilroy to Mike, and right away I was at it again. Mike’s voice all metallic with the effort to sound upbeat. Kilroy walking away. Mike unhappier even than he had to be, because of me. Kilroy receding down the hall, always out of reach.
It was dim in the alcove, the flat light of early morning. I reached for my watch and was surprised to find it was after ten. I got up and went to the soon-to-be-covered stairwell window. No wonder I’d slept in: the sky was close and gray.
I rummaged in my messy suitcase for clothes, then went into the bathroom for a shower. Afterward, in the foggy glass of the medicine cabinet, my face looked puffy. I used my towel to rub a spot clear, and my face was puffy.
Lane and Alice had made room for some of my stuff on a shelf that held their toiletries, and I reached for my blow dryer and plugged it in. I half dried my hair and then stopped, tired of the effort. I got into my clothes and tried to smooth out my sweater, but gave up. It was hopeless. Every so often I opened my suitcase and tried to get it organized, but it only lasted a few days. Wearing wrinkled clothes was just part of my life.
When I stepped out of the bathroom Lane appeared almost instantly in her doorway, as if she’d been waiting.
“Oh, I’m sorry,” I said. “Did you need the bathroom? I was in there forever.”
She smiled. “No, I wanted to say I was sorry. About last night. I mean—I think I offended Kilroy.”
I shook my head vehemently, and she gave me a puzzled look. “I didn’t offend him?”
“To tell you the truth,” I said, “I don’t really know what happened.” To my dismay, tears pricked at my eyes, and I looked down. After a moment, I pressed my fingertips against my eyelids and wiped the wetness away. When I looked up again, a furrow had appeared between her pale eyebrows.
“Are you OK?”
I nodded.
“Do you want to come in? And sit down?”
I looked past her into her room. It was the nicest in the house: she’d repaired her walls and painted them a pretty pale green, offset by a glossy dark gray on the moldings. She was never home at this hour, and I wondered if she was sick. Her hair s
tuck up in places, but she was dressed, in skinny black pants and a gray top that dwarfed her, its neckline so wide it exposed one shoulder.
“Come on,” she said, and she moved in and stepped aside for me, then pointed me toward a little pale-blue armchair in the corner. She sat on her bed and gave me a warm smile. There was something comfortable about her, or maybe comforting. She always kept her door ajar, called “Good morning” or “Goodnight” to me as I went to or from the bathroom. When the door was closed I knew her girlfriend was staying over.
“Do you—” she began. “I mean, I don’t want to pry, but if you want to talk …”
I looked into my lap. I thought of the early years of my relationship with Mike, how I’d told Jamie everything. It had been as if things hadn’t really happened until I’d described them to her. The two of us on the phone, or lying on the floor in her bedroom … I wasn’t telling anyone about Kilroy. Simon had asked a few times, but I hadn’t felt comfortable.
My lips were dry, and I licked them. “Thanks.”
A series of waist-high bookcases lined Lane’s walls, and I scanned them. Their tops were covered with framed pictures and all kinds of objects, from seashells to baskets to ceramic bowls full of buttons and marbles. Near me, a blue glass bottle held a single sprig of lavender, and I leaned over and smelled it.
“Amazing how the scent lasts, isn’t it?”
I looked over and found her smiling gently. “It is,” I said. “Your room is so lovely,” I added, and my face warmed a little. “I mean, I’m not sure I’ve ever called anything lovely before, but it’s the right word for this.”
She smiled. “Thank you. I’m sorry not to have invited you in before.”
“Oh, no, please—I’ve been this weird neighbor, you didn’t know how long I was staying. You still don’t. I don’t.”
She shrugged. “What difference does it make? Miss Wolf says plans are for the bourgeois.” She smiled. “Of course, at the same time she’s asking if I can come at nine instead of nine-thirty the next day because she wants help dealing with the new cleaning lady.”