The Off Season

by Amy Hoffman

  “Organic drag,” I said.

  “Exactly,” said Marcus. He seemed pleased with the idea. “You could call it that.”

  “When did Margot first—emerge?” I asked him. This was what I had really wanted to know. The origin of his unusual dream.

  “Oh, my dear, Margot’s always been with me. Always. I mean, she may have changed her style a bit, to keep up with the times, you know. But she is who she is and always has been, since I can remember. Singing and making people happy.

  “Most people. Not my parents, of course. Although it’s from them I got my love of Frank Sinatra—so ironic. Old Blue Eyes, my mother called him, the star of her youth. She and my father were so young when they had me, married right out of high school, you know. She was one of those girls who would scream for him, like we did for the Beatles—do you remember, my dear? It was such fun.”

  “Actually that was before my time,” I said. “I wasn’t born until 1976.”

  Marcus looked taken aback, as though this was an impossibility. “Well. I think my mother had a little pash for him all her life,” he continued. “My dad had blue eyes, and as a small child I used to wonder, Is that why she married him? Certainly it wasn’t because he was such delightful company. Going to work, coming home. The Organization Man, they used to call it. Tennis on the weekends.

  “He tried to teach me once, his little sissy. On those unshaded courts, a machine hurling the balls at you, one after another. A literal cannonade. With the sun beating down and that rubbery asphalt smell. ‘Look smart!’ he kept shouting. ‘Don’t lock those knees!’ Finally I just fainted dead on the ground.

  “I panicked when I opened my eyes. He was standing above me, and I had the terrible thought that he was going to abuse me somehow. Slap me. Call me names. I don’t know why that occurred to me; he’d never done anything like it before. And he wasn’t a bad man, just hopelessly conventional—probably also a little what we would now call OCD. Obsessive. I’m quite sure it never entered his mind to lay hands on me then or any other time. No. He helped me up and got me some water and apologized for taking me out on such a beastly day. And you’ll never guess what he told my mother about the whole thing.”

  “Was he disappointed?”

  “Not at all!” said Marcus. “He said, ‘Our Marky has other talents.’ Who knew he had it in him? Such kindness and insight. I’m convinced he must have had hidden depths, although I don’t think he even hinted at any such thing ever again, to me or to my mother.”

  “So is that when you started wanting to live your dream?”

  “Perhaps so, my dear, perhaps so. I had a long way to go between that charming moment and this one, but I do believe my father would give my work here his blessing. My late mother too—because Margot’s always shared her love for Old Blue Eyes, you know.”

  Marcus stood and stretched his arms up above his head, then out to the sides, twisting to the right and left a few times, and finishing by flopping over to touch his toes. “I think we’ve done enough for today,” he said. “I’m simply pooped.”

  “Thank you for doing this, Marcus,” I said, superpolite, trying to match his elegant manner. “I really enjoyed it; I hope you did too.”

  “A pleasure,” he agreed.

  “But do you think Margot would be willing to come over one day and let me draw her, too?”

  “Why don’t we leave things as they are,” said Marcus, coming over to my side of the easel to examine my sketches. Showing these always made me uncomfortable—they were basically notes, some quite detailed but others just a few lines or shadings, useful to me, but probably indecipherable to anyone else. They could cause the sitters a pang of regret or even anger, as they wondered whether this was all they added up to: a pattern of lines and shadows. But Marcus nodded. “A work of art should express both the inner and the outer truth—don’t you agree?”

  After he left, I picked up my book again. “Do not quench your inspiration and your imagination,” I read. “Do not become the slave of your model.” On a new sheet of newsprint I drew the chair, Margot’s wig draped over the back of it, her skirt and stockings folded and stacked neatly on the seat.

  Triangles and Squares

  Since Roger and I had reconciled, he had sat for me in the studio a few more times, and then we had gotten into the habit of meeting for coffee on the Teddy patio when I had a free morning. We would chat about this and that—he had become especially interested in the progress of my artwork, or more specifically, of my portrait of him—but our conversation would inevitably settle on Janelle: her recovery, with its ups and downs; her ever-lengthening walks along the seashore, especially during her downs; her new clients; her dates.

  She had begun dating. I was hardly in a position to object, but underneath everything that had happened, and even with Baby and my masterpiece to keep me busy, I missed her. I didn’t want her to leave me behind, as she found happiness with Carmen or Nancy or most often these days, most ominously, the formidable Mi’Kay. Fellow techie and tinkerer, fellow walker on the beach. Unlike the others, whom Janelle had met over the Internet, Mi’Kay had apparently dropped in on Janelle’s survivor support group at the Outer Cape clinic.

  “Tall, dark, and handsome,” said Roger.

  Even he was taken with her.

  “And Mi’Kay’s been so good for her,” he babbled. “She has this unique warmth, which I guess you don’t expect from someone that beautiful—those incredible cheekbones—and she’s so patient, when even I am ready to throw up my hands. Mi’Kay always seems to know just what to say, or do, you know, when talking just isn’t what Janelle needs.”

  “So I guess not much of an intellect.”

  “Are you serious?” He looked at me. “She’s a professor at MIT. On sabbatical this year—that’s why she’s spending so much time down here. She’s renting a little cabin out in the East End, finishing a book. She’s actually very busy with it; her publisher wants it as soon as possible, because it’s going to blow her field wide open. I don’t understand the whole thing, but it’s something to do with global warming, and how to turn it around. They’re already booking her onto Today and all that. And yet, Mi’Kay’s so down to earth, I bet even you would love her.”

  “Mi’Kay, Mi’Kay, Mi’Kay,” I said. “You sound very impressed.”

  “Who wouldn’t be?” he said. “Don’t tell me you’re jealous.”

  Of course I was. And in the worst way: I didn’t exactly want Janelle back, which was clearly impossible, but apparently I didn’t want anyone else to have her, either. Especially not someone as all-around wonderful as Mi’Kay. “Oh, uh-uh,” I said, trying to sound casual, and not trusting myself to say actual words. Janelle would have said I had no right to feel the lump in my throat.

  In fact, she only barely missed the opportunity. “Okay, I’m here,” she said, standing over our table.

  Roger jumped up and hugged her. “You’re so brave, sweetheart!” he said.

  Janelle glared at me over his shoulder. “Roger begged me to do this,” she explained. “To come by when you’d be here.”

  “Nora appreciates it,” Roger prompted me.

  “I do,” I realized. “Roger says you’re dating other people—”

  “These days just Mi’Kay,” said Janelle.

  It was worse than I had thought. They must have had the Talk and decided on monogamy. “Right,” I said. “Roger told me about her. She sounds great, Janelle, really. I’m happy for you.”

  “How come your face is all blotchy, then?” she said. “Or am I just not used to looking at a white girl all the time anymore?”

  “Oh, come on, Janelle,” said Roger. He took her hand and mine and tried to put them together. “Kiss and make up.”

  I could actually see her thought: You’ve got to be kidding.

  “I miss you,” I said. “I don’t want us to . . .” For a moment I couldn’t go on, and I guess my face got even more blotchy. “I don’t want us to go on like this, avoiding each other
and being mad. I don’t want to lose you forever,” I said in a rush.

  She sighed. “These past few months . . . Look, I know you’re trying. With the posters, and the town meeting. I know you did those things for me. But you never get it right, you know? You didn’t used to be like that—did you? Your hot affair, your painting or whatever, that Roger’s always going on about. Good for you for getting back into your art instead of those tacky earrings—”

  “—They weren’t tacky! I liked them!”

  “—but squatting in some guy’s toolshed? You’ve become so unpredictable!”

  “Janelle,” I said. “Remember last summer, when you told me I was having a midlife crisis? I didn’t agree, but you were right. I was stuck. We were stuck. And since we moved here, I guess I’ve started coming unstuck. Haven’t you changed too? Look at the action you did at the Stop & Shop. You never used to get so carried away.”

  “Maybe not on the outside. Maybe you just didn’t see it. Maybe that’s the problem. Mi’Kay gets me; maybe it’s a black thing.”

  “Oh,” I said. The great unspoken. Of course, we had talked about our racial difference a lot at the beginning, in those long, irresistible pre- and postsex conversations one has, when her stories haven’t yet become familiar but are full of exciting revelation, and even yours, as she listens, seem to acquire new significance—but after a while, as we had settled into a day-to-day life with each other, we had neglected that particular discussion, and at a certain point I, at least, had told myself that was okay. That all the things we had in common, like gender and sexuality and class and age and even New York geography, transcended it. Janelle, I now realized, had never exactly voiced her agreement; if I alluded to my idea she had just nodded: Umm hmm. “I don’t know,” I said. “I thought we understood each other pretty well.”

  “I thought we did too,” she conceded. “But look at what happened! So maybe not. And I don’t think it’s so great for me to just let my feelings shine out, any which way. When I think about that day, I’m embarrassed. So I expressed my anger, so what? The Stop & Shop people won’t even let me in the store now, much less meet with me and reconsider selling some of their noxious products.” She paused. “And people like me will just keep getting sick.”

  “Honey, don’t—”

  “I thought I was finally getting through everything, coming out the other side, returning to normal, and now you want back in my life? As my friend?”

  “I do,” I said. She was about to turn away when Broony rushed out onto the patio.

  “Aha!” she said, pointing at me and Janelle. “You were not expecting me! But I am here, and I catch you flirting with your woman. I will certainly tell Baby!”

  “Hey, what’s your problem?” said Janelle, grabbing my hand as Roger had tried to make her do and giving it a squeeze.

  “Like Baby would care,” I told Broony. “Baby knows all about Janelle.”

  “Yeah,” said Janelle. “We’re all old pals. So leave us alone. I don’t know what business our conversation is of yours.”

  “Bah!” said Broony. “Think what you want!” She turned away and went back into the store.

  “Nice friends you have,” said Roger.

  Janelle extricated her hand from mine. “What was that all about?” she asked.

  “Broony,” I explained. “Brunhilde. She works here, and she and Baby go swimming together. They’re having a thing.”

  “A thing,” said Janelle.

  “A thing,” I said.

  Janelle caught Roger’s eye and gave a short, snorting laugh.

  “Swimming,” said Roger. “Is that what you deeks call it?”

  Janelle turned to him. “Mi’Kay had to go into Boston for the day to meet with her agent, but she should be back by now, so I’ll be over at her place. You have my key, right?”

  “No problem,” he said. “Have fun.”

  “Kiss kiss,” she told him. Then she leaned down and gave me an awkward sort of hug around the shoulders. “I don’t want you to disappear from my life either,” she admitted. “I think that’s why I keep harassing you.” Then she rushed off.

  “That,” I said, “I didn’t expect.”

  Roger watched her go and then leaned over to me confidentially. “I think she’s finally put back on a few pounds. Mi’Kay is such a good cook.”

  “Naturally,” I said. “I mean, I’d expect nothing less.”

  He looked at me. “Sorry,” he said. “I get carried away.”

  “I’m trying, you know?” I said. “But enough already about Ms. Perfect. Or should I say doctor. Dr. Perfect.”

  “Okay, blotchy-face,” he said.

  It was my turn to give a short, snorting laugh. “I never realized I blushed like that.”

  “The things we don’t know about ourselves,” said Roger. “Let’s go.”

  He left for Janelle’s, and I walked across the street to the town beach. The spring sun was making an effort, but the sand, when I sat down, was cold. The tide was so far out, exposing sandbars and patches of bright green seaweed nearly all the way to Long Point, that you could have walked rather than swum there—and indeed here and there in the distance small, silhouetted figures were making the trek, the occasional dog leaping beside them. The sailboats and dinghies that usually floated near the shore had been left high and dry, their anchor lines as crossed and tangled as my thoughts.

  Janelle-Nora-Baby, Nora-Baby-Broony—a triangle is easily thrown off balance, like a three-legged table. But Broony was, Baby had hinted, on her way out, and now Mi’Kay had arrived, and our wobbly triangles seemed about to open into a square: Nora and Baby, Janelle and Mi’Kay, each in her corner. The boat was no longer rockable. Instability, though, creates movement, and there’s a reason hip folk call couples squares.

  The Call

  Miss Ruby was leaning to one side in her chair and snoring when I walked in the door after a shift, with a cat in her lap and the television cackling. “There you are!” she murmured. “I was hoping you’d be back soon.”

  “No you weren’t,” I pointed out. “You were sleeping.”

  “Was not,” she said, sitting up. “I came back from walking with Tony, and I was thinking.” Her eyes fluttered closed. “You made us some signs, and we were dancing—”

  I put my hand on her shoulder and shook her. “Wake up!”

  She reached up and patted my hand. “Maybe that was a little dream. About the Swim,” she said.

  “I still don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “One of those ideas of Tony’s. I mean, the harbor’s pretty clean early in the year like this, but you just know they’ll be closing beaches once the season starts, and the town gets crowded. Stresses the septic systems.”

  “That’s disgusting!” I said. “Are you serious?”

  “It’s the goddess’s truth. So Tony says if you paint us some signs about the pollution, then when the people are coming in from the swim, we could hold them up.” She brushed the cat off her thighs purposefully, as though she meant to get up and walk a picket line right then, but it immediately jumped back into her lap. “Ye-es puss-puss,” she said, stroking it, then looked up at me. “I mean, isn’t that how we got started on all this—the water?”

  “I guess so. It seems like such a long time ago. But isn’t the Swim supposed to be festive? Not,” I admitted, “that I’m looking forward to it.”

  “Everyone goes,” said Miss Ruby. “You’ll see—it’s fun.”

  “Cheering on Baby and Broony. What’s fun about that?”

  “Well, if you make us some signs you’ll have your own private reason to go,” said Miss Ruby reasonably.

  So I walked over to the hardware store to get a few big sheets of ocean-blue oak tag paper and superwide markers in several colors. On the way back, I thought about designs. The posters would be dual purpose. Innocuous on one side, like the ones a lot of the spectators would be carrying, they would read “Go Baby!” (even for the big day, I refused to ro
ot for Broony). But then we would reverse them as the swimmers splashed into the finish line, and the other side would ask something like “What’s in the water?” A bit cryptic, but since we had already done one action using questions like that, I hoped people would get it.

  Picturing how I would decorate the posters around the edges with hieroglyphics of waves, birds, and sea creatures, I nearly crashed into Reverend Patsy as I passed the church. She was pacing carefully in front of it, as though the uneven bricks of Commercial Street were a tightrope. “Good lord!” She looked up, startled. “Nora! I didn’t see you. My walking meditation. And you seem lost in thought too. A penny for them!”

  I didn’t want to tell her about our plan for a protest at the Swim and risk getting into another argument—her reactions were so unpredictable. On the one hand, she might want to join in, but on the other she might decide we would be violating the spirit of the day, or something. “Just thinking about my mural.”

  She fell into step beside me. “A mural!” she said. “I didn’t know. How creative! What’s it for?”

  “It’s not really for anything.”

  “Ah, the age-old question,” said Patsy. “Must art serve a purpose?”

  I shrugged, playing the inarticulate painter. Debating the purposes of art was something I hadn’t done since college days. I used to enjoy those sorts of passionate, after-dinner sessions, and they certainly helped me when I had to get in front of a classroom, but I had discovered it was a relief not to have to be so constantly analytical. “I don’t know; this piece is just something I started doing. I’m still not sure what it will look like in the end, but lately I’ve been working on portraits of various Provincetown people who I’ve met,” I said. “Miss Ruby, Baby, Tony. Margot. Roger.”

  “Roger? Who’s Roger?”

  “An old friend,” I said. “He’s been spending a lot of time here, helping Janelle.”

  “Still, I don’t see why he belongs in it.”