by Sands Hall
Rich took his hand away. “He’ll have forgotten all about it by tomorrow.”
“I don’t think so.”
“You’re one cynical lady, you know that?”
“I am?”
Rich nodded, passing a finger back and forth through the flame of a candle.
Maud shook her head. Cynical! “We all find out soon enough the world isn’t the way we imagined it.” Her father, arguing with her, telling her that Romeo and Juliet was certainly not about “true love.” Why do you think Shakespeare put Romeo’s love for Rosalind in there? Eh? The eyebrows raised, forcing agreement in a face Maud knew, even at the age of fourteen, he would describe as obdurate. To prove that young love is fickle. If their love hadn’t been forbidden, if Romeo had not been banished, their love would have gone the way of all puppy romances. His point is that Romeo would have moved on as soon as he saw yet another pretty face.
Maud had argued with him, had gone upstairs to cast herself face down on her bed; ultimately this was a lecture about a “crush” she was herself enduring. But she’d been jaundiced about every production of Romeo and Juliet she’d seen since. To Rich she said, “What’s the harm in letting a child believe in dreams? As long as they’re able.”
“Well, we differ there, lady,” Rich said, and she wondered, not for the first time, about his childhood—a father who compared pussy to steak, for example. But there was that agreement of theirs, and she wasn’t going to break it now. She found herself kissing his forehead, bestowing a kind of forgiveness she didn’t in the least feel and that, to her irritation, he didn’t seem to feel he needed. As she drew back from this kiss, aware of the silky feel of his hair beneath her fingers, the citrusy smell of his skin, she was reminded of the last time she’d told Miles she loved him. She had asked him—how appalling it was to remember!—to marry her. Had she really wanted that? We’ll see, he’d said. I’m not opposed to the idea.
She stared at her hand on the nape of Rich’s neck. When would she stop acting the part she thought she was supposed to be playing? She felt Rich look at her. She met his eyes. “I think maybe we should stop seeing each other, Rich.”
A lock of blond hair had fallen across his forehead. He stared, then shook it back, drained what was left in his wineglass, and stood. “Where’s my jacket?”
“In the bedroom.” Her hands felt useless, hanging by her sides, but there was nowhere to put them now. “I’ll get it.”
It was lying across the futon where she’d tossed it. As she picked it up he came into the room, put his arms around her, spoke in her ear, a hot breath that made her knees give. “How about a last one, beautiful lady, just to say goodbye?”
She shook her head, but she did not move away.
He slid his hands beneath her turtleneck; his fingers found and released the button of her skirt. As they stumbled towards the futon she felt hot tears gather at the corners of her eyes. After tonight they would not hold each other again. After tonight they would not dance again at Farquaarts; she wouldn’t touch the curve of his face, nor sit beside him again in his red pickup.
He drew away. His face, his hair, picked up a sheen of light from the street lamp outside. “You protected?”
“Yes, Rich.”
“I got a condom in my jacket pocket.”
“If I’d wanted to get pregnant I’d have done it before now.”
“I’m just thinking—this will be our last night and then I’ll find out you’re p.g. or something.” He patted her. “Seeing you with that kid got me scared.”
“It’s not just a kid I want, Rich.” A car, turning at the corner, swerved its headlights through the curtains. She waited for the sound of the engine to fade. “It’s more than—it’s the whole thing, the whole package.”
He blew his breath out.
“Right. It’s always been a problem. I wonder why. It seems like such a straightforward, normal thing to want. To want to do it with someone who wants it too.” She thought of Lizzie, who’d just gotten pregnant when she wanted to, who hadn’t waited for agreement. They stared up at the ceiling, bodies separate, two long burrows beneath the bedclothes. “And it’s not going to happen. Not with you, not with anyone. I’m too old.”
Rich threw back the covers. “I should go.”
“Yes.” Her voice was calm, far calmer than she felt.
He sat with his head in his hands, rubbed at his scalp, then reached for his hat, which was on the floor beside them. He put it on, took it off again and looked at it. The ridge of his long backbone gleamed. Maud moved a hand up to her chest to feel the miraculous force in the thudding of her heart. This is the best thing, she told herself, and kept herself from reaching to touch that shining ridge of spine.
He stood up, holding his hat, turned to face her. “Jesus! Two people get together to have a good time. It’s not about me being the father of your kids, or taking care of you the rest of your life or whatever the fuck it is you want.”
“I’ve never ever brought any of that up. Not once.”
“It hangs out all over you. Even your stomach, so goddamn flat, drives me crazy thinking about it, what I should do is poke my dick up there, make it round with a kid.” He tugged his hat on, pulled it off, held it in front of him as if covering his nakedness. “I can’t believe I even think about it,” he said. “I hate my goddamn family. Never want to bring a child on this earth. I’ve got to go.” He pulled his pants from the heap on the floor. She heard change roll out, keys land with a clump on the floor. “Damn.” He crouched, gathering these things.
Maud moved to turn on the light.
“No, don’t,” Rich said. “Leave it off.” He knelt beside her, pulled her face to his, and kissed her. “Goddamn it,” he said, and continued to pull on his clothes. Dressed, his hat tilted back, hands shoved in his pockets, he stared at her. His body, topped by the hat, was limned by the streetlight and the darkness. Now and again the whites of his eyes gleamed. Finally he said, “If I get back in bed with you, it doesn’t mean anything other than the fact that we’re going to fuck, one last time.”
She said nothing. The buckle of his belt hit the floor. He slid beneath the blanket, the length of his legs cold against hers. He held her, close, tight, their hearts beating together. “Shit,” he murmured.
Afterward she lay face up, staring into the darkness, wondering what it meant that she had given in to the demand of her body, and of Rich’s. Let it be, she told herself, let it be. But she skimmed the surface of sleep, afraid, as she always was, that if she dozed she would waken into the sucking dread, the litany that murmured in her head: all the wasted, useless moments of her life, all the things she had done and could not undo, all the curving paths twisting back and back and back. And knowing how way leads on to way. She could not make out which was the original wrong fork. No doubt this affair with Rich was just one more. She understood she was an unsatisfied person; she sucked melancholy. She was one of those condemned—condemned by herself!—to live an unhappy life.
And in spite of her efforts to be emotionally distant and disconnected, Lizzie-like, the ivy of her heart had crept its way into the trellis of the unsuitable man who lay beside her. She would have a hard time detaching, spiky leaf by spiky leaf. After she’d spent the night with Rich she didn’t want to wash her hair; she wanted to keep the lemony smell of him nearby. She would put the ends of her hair to her nostrils and breathe deeply of his sweat, their sex, whatever it was they created together or he rubbed off, like butterfly dust, onto her skin and hair. She’d never felt this way about Miles. But it wasn’t love she felt for Rich, it was lust, or maybe just some terrifying need. She was tempted—as she was almost every night—to rise from the bed and call Miles, ask if she could please come home.
Home. Not that she had one anymore. And she never really had, even in those years with Miles, when everything always felt temporary, endlessly mutable. And now home was a rented house filled with found and borrowed furniture; she owned nothing in the material world. L
izzie had used the money their grandparents left them to buy a piece of land. Maud spent it on piano and singing lessons, on photographs and expensive acting seminars; towards the end of her time in Hollywood she’d invested in silk blouses and a push-up bra. She’d used it to buy time in a recording studio for Miles so that she would feel, as she seldom did, that they were contributing something to each other’s lives. But she had neither purchased nor created something lasting. Her few accomplishments were in the ephemeral arts, moments gone, as Nikos said, as soon as they were created. Lizzie had paintings. Lizzie had children. Noah’s mother had Noah. Other artists had books, sculptures, photographs—tangible mementos of their aspiration and their effort. But only the smallest measure of her artistry would endure: a patched-together video of her appearances on television, a tape of a song. Even memories were transient, and would endure only as long as the owner of the mind that carried them. Her blood ran only in the veins of her nieces and nephew. Not a wrinkle, a crumb, a tear, a dent would show that she’d put her time in on the planet.
Rich slept curved away from her, blankets drawn high up over one shoulder. The hunch of his back—dark blanket against the darker black of the room—seemed protective. And he was protecting himself. He had to. Who could possibly endure the rush of longing that streamed from her? Just as she sometimes literally sat on her hands to keep from touching him, she also sat on her heart to keep its red from seeping through the bandages, where he would see it, and run from its running.
Her life was a huge and heavy tarpaulin, flapping in the wind, the kind of tarpaulin that might hang over a wedding banquet to protect the cake and canapés from the sun. A few tent pegs held sections of the tarp in place—the pegs of acquaintances, her little rented house, her job at the Red Garter, the sound of Rich breathing beside her. But the big pegs, the flat-topped wooden stumps that held the corners, which needed huge-handled axes to pound them into place, were missing. She had Lizzie, of course, and Hannah-hoo, Summer, and Theo. But where were the husband, love, children, career? Her army green, tattered tarpaulin flapped in a dreadful wind that blew through her life. The noise it made was deep and roaring, a thousand rugs being shaken, a hundred vacuum cleaners left on high. Moments like this, the only tether that remained was the ten-cent aluminum peg of her self, her slim, all-too-malleable belief in her self. And amidst the ferocity of the dry, sand-filled wind that roared around her, even this was being yanked, little by little, out of the arid earth. Soon it would pull free, and she would flap and tumble through endless dark and freezing space.
It was no wonder she clung to Rich, the flotsam that had presented itself to her in this cold, heaving sea.
Block that metaphor, she told herself, some desperate humor asking her to look at the blood red heart and the seas and the tarpaulins and winds and flotsam and tent pegs that she had depicted and then discarded, the crumpled-up sketches of a frustrated cartoonist, around the bed.
The bed she had made and was lying in.
She lowered her forehead to the curve of Rich’s bare back and held it there, breathing.
“God,” Rich said, stretching, “I could sleep forever.”
Maud opened her eyes. Light filtered through the patterned white cloth she’d made into curtains. She’d slept. She thanked the gods for that, an earnest, heartfelt prayer of gratitude. She kept her face turned away from his, afraid of what she knew would be her puffy eyes, the pronounced circles beneath them, the wrinkles around them. The morning sun when it’s in your face, Rod Stewart mourned in his rattly voice, really shows your age.
Rich stretched again and yawned, a huge, generous sound. Maud pushed back the covers. “We should get up.”
He stared at her, grumpy. “Right,” he said. But he pulled her to him. Maud breathed in the smell of him, of them. “I’ll take you out for breakfast at Joanie’s,” he said. “How’s that?”
She felt his cock rise and lift. He took one of her nipples in his mouth. As he sucked she felt the tug all the way into her stomach, into her womb. She wondered what invisible cording, musculature, physiology, psychology, bound the breast and womb together. And she would never know. A baby would never gaze up at her, pulling love from her eyes and milk from her breast. The ancient and familiar ache of tears made her bend her head to kiss the top of Rich’s head. His hair was as fine as corn silk, the simile incredibly apt: white-blond, silky and fine. “Richard,” she whispered.
He pulled back. The air in the room changed, no longer sweet and slow-moving but jagged as barbed wire. “Richard,” Maud repeated, and then realized: For the first time she had called him by his full name. It acted like an endearment. It was as if she’d said sweetheart, or even, I love you.
“We should go,” she said.
“I got lots to do today,” he said at the same time, and kicked away blankets and sheets.
She dressed quickly, thinking that she should refuse the offer of breakfast, she should stay in her house, with a jaunty wave say a final goodbye to him from her little doorway. But when she saw the kitchen, littered with dirty plates and a fatty broiler, she changed her mind. She had neglected to put the cheese away. She did this before they left, although he stood in the door of the kitchen, slapping his hat against his knee. As she placed dishes in the sink, he said, “I hope you’re not expecting me to do those.”
“Why not?” she said, turning on the hot water. “It’ll just take a minute.”
But she settled for Rich bringing her the empty wine bottle and the glasses off the table.
The phone rang as they were on their way out the door. She let the machine pick up. Rich paused, clearly interested. “This is Chris Daugherty, Artistic Director of the Fable Mountain Stage Company. Ron Bartlett gave us your name. He said to tell you that he’s a friend of your sister’s and met you one evening at Farquaarts. We are in the midst of casting our next production, Twelfth Night, and wonder if you have a P-and-R you could drop by and some pieces worked up you could show us. Please give us a call at your earliest convenience.”
She enjoyed the flicker of interest this aroused in Rich. “An actress,” he said. “I forget that. What’s a P-and-R?”
“Picture and resume.” Her mind whirred. The female roles in Twelfth Night were all excellent: Olivia or Viola. Maria.
“Let me see.”
She had to dig through a file box to find them. He held one between finger and thumb. She waited to hear what actors always heard: This doesn’t look like you. And yet that black-and-white representation was chosen with such care and indecision, with the help of agents and friends. So much was riding on the choice: Was this the picture that would get you in the door? Was this the one that glowed with all the stuff of which your art and soul were capable, and was it “pretty,” too?
“You don’t look anything like this,” he said. “You look so beautiful.” He turned it over. “What’s all this?”
Just her history. Black marks on a single sheet of paper representing the characters she’d brought to life from the literary cyberspace they inhabited between manifestations. Hundreds of these—photo, resume, stapled back to back—had been mailed and handed and requested and discarded in the studios and offices of Hollywood. If she was really lucky, she got a five-minute audition out of it. If she was touched by God, she got a job.
“You were on Search for Tomorrow?”
“Briefly. Those are the places I’ve worked, the shows I’ve done, the classes I’ve taken, the teachers and directors with whom I’ve worked.”
“With whom,” he mocked, handing it back. “Aren’t you going to call the guy back?”
“Later, maybe.”
On the brief drive to Joanie’s, he nudged her knee with his gloved hand. “Can I have your autograph?” But he did not leave his hand there, and he did not reach towards her again. Maud told her-self this was good. After all, they were breaking up—if there was anything to break—and being civilized about it: a final breakfast. She stared out her window at the passing neighborhood, t
he occasional patch of dirty snow, the houses, pathetic in the bright winter-morning sun. Her breath pooled on the glass. She thought of Lear’s anguished vacillation of belief, just before he dies, that his beloved daughter, who he knows is dead, might still be alive: Lend me a looking glass, he says. If that her breath will mist or stain the stone, why then she lives.
Maud breathed onto the glass again and doodled a flower in the mist with a finger. At least Lear had died comprehending his tragic flaw: Thou art the thing itself; unaccommodated man is no more than such a poor, bare, forked animal as thou art. His next lifetimes, if he had them, or the spore of his being that would float into the cosmos upon his death, would be infused by this recognition; he died knowing the lesson he’d been put here to learn. When we are born we cry that we are come to this great stage of fools. Would she have a similar moment of realization? Would the chronic bombardment of memories of Miles and life in Los Angeles, or the anguish of her long, wakeful nights, lead her to some understanding of, some justification for, the struts and frets of her hour upon the stage? I live with bread like you, Richard II says, feel want, taste grief, need friends. Subjected thus, how can you say to me I am a king?
Shifting down for a stop sign, Rich asked, “What are you thinking about?”
Maud tried to think of something other than the truth. “Shakespeare,” she said, and laughed. “Life, death, God. ‘Men must endure their going hence even as their coming hither.’ ”
“Can’t follow you there, I guess,” Rich said. Maud grinned at him, a surprising degree of agreement suddenly warm between them. He shifted, wrapped his fingers around the steering wheel. “And I guess I wouldn’t want to.”
Joanie’s smelled of yeast and coffee and heating butter and eggs. Rich made no gesture of connection, walking ahead of her towards a booth at the back, but Maud was aware that appearing at Joanie’s first thing in the morning with him indicated rather precisely the nature of their relationship. Why had she not thought of this? She nodded at the man she saw most days behind the checkout counter at the grocery store, and caught the eye of Lynn, a bartender at Farquaarts. Elmer, the gentle owner of Mountain Music, who played mandolin and had a long white beard, lifted a hand. Her first response, when she saw Jake sitting at the counter with a newspaper, was to turn and flee. In fact, she stumbled on an uneven piece of tile and this attracted his attention. “Well, hello, Maud-Lizzie’s-sister,” he said.