The Collected Stories

by Leonard Michaels

  Margaret tells me her lover is wonderful. “He makes me feel like a woman,” she says, “without degrading me.” I don’t know what she means, but can’t ask. What is it to feel like a woman? or to be made to feel that way?

  I said to Margaret, “When we talk we make a small world of trust.” Quickly she says, “There are men so loose of soul they talk even in their sleep.” She laughs, surprised by her good memory and how wonderful Shakespeare is. She didn’t get it right, but the point is that it no longer mattered what I was going to say. I said, “You didn’t get it right.” She was talking, didn’t hear me.

  I asked Deborah out to dinner. She said, “You looking for an exotic date or something?” Now she tells me that she went to an orgy in Berkeley. It was highly organized. On Wednesday, everyone met at the home of the couple, an engineer and his wife. People talked, got to know one another, then went home. They returned on Friday and took off their clothes. “But you didn’t have to undress or do anything,” said Deborah. “I only wanted to watch.” But so many of them begged her to undress that she finally consented, except for her underwear. Then she lay on the floor. The engineer, his wife, and their friends, all of them naked, kneeling on either side of her, mauled her. She was being polite.

  “A Japanese angel.”

  “I didn’t behave like them,” she said.

  Sonny was my best friend. Then she says, “I met a man last night.” My heart grew heavy. I couldn’t count on her anymore for dinner, long talks on the telephone, serious attention to my problems, and she’d no longer tell me about herself, how well or ill she slept last night, and whether she dreamed, and what she did yesterday, and what people told her and she them. She said, “I don’t know why, but I feel guilty toward you.”

  I said, “What’s he like?” She said he is some kind of a psychotherapist, divorced, lives in Mill Valley. His former wife is Korean, a fashion model. She made him install a plate-glass window in their living room so birds would fly into it and break their necks. She had them stuffed.

  “Oh, I know the guy,” I said. “Women find him attractive.”

  “How do men find him?”

  I was conscious of the danger.

  “He dresses well. He likes classical music and hiking. He goes sailing. He’s a good cook. Doesn’t smoke.”

  “You think he’s a prick.”

  Sonny was six years old when she went up on a roof with a boy. He pulled down his pants. She pulled down hers. They looked. Years later she still worried about what she’d done, thinking she could never be famous because the boy would tell everybody she’d pulled her pants down. She was a success in school and had innumerable boyfriends. None of that changed anything for her. At the age of six, in a thoughtless moment, she ruined her life.

  Billy comes to my office, sits, looks me in the eye, and says, “Girls like to be spanked.”

  Sonny will see the man, sleep with him, then linger in regret to the end. If I said, “I know for certain he has leprosy,” she would still see the man, etc. Nobody passes up romance.

  Sonny says she dislikes being touched by doctors. I thought to remind her, but she said quickly, “He’s different.” With me — as if talking to herself — she needn’t bother about little connections.

  There was a message for me at the motel. I hoped it was Sonny, but it’s from Evelyn.“Call immediately.” I call. The crazy pitch of her hello means she bought something or she met a famous person. I’m wrong. She says, “I went to a garage sale in the Oakland hills. Are you listening? There was a Swedish dresser with glass pulls. Inside one drawer I see a piece of paper, like folded in half. I opened it. It’s a sketch in red crayon. Old, but nice, not faded. I scrunched it quick into my purse. I also got a pewter dish and a pocket watch. I went home. No, first I met Sheila for coffee. I didn’t tell her what I got. She’s so jealous. Later I went home and took the sketch out of my purse. I smoothed it out. It’s the head of a woman, signed by Raphael. I almost died. So I phoned Sheila—”

  “You stole a Raphael?”

  “Listen, I almost died. Sheila has a friend in the art department at Berkeley. I called him and went to his office. He almost died. He said it looks authentic, but he couldn’t be positive. He told me to mail it to a man in England. The greatest living expert. So I mailed it to him.”

  “Insured?”

  “Regular mail. Listen. Listen, the expert just phoned me. He says he almost died. It’s authentic. But listen. Wait till you hear what else …”

  Sonny tells me she will separate her emotional life from her sexual feelings. “In other words,” she said, “I’ll have an affair only if I can’t become entangled with the man.”

  “In other words, you’re already doing it.”

  “How embarrassing … I lied.”

  Byron says, “And, after all, what is a lie? ’Tis but the truth in masquerade.”

  Are some truths told only by lying?

  You know why there is heaven and hell? It’s to make the past real. Otherwise there is no past. There is only the present.

  Eddie met the woman years ago, in another state, prior to her divorce, long before she changed her hairstyle and became a different person. His own hair, though beginning to gray, was much the same. He figures she recognized him immediately, but since he didn’t recognize her, she didn’t tell him they’d met before. Both acted as if neither was part of the other’s past, even after they’d slept together again. Eddie imitated himself: “Oh, did you grow up in Michigan?” By then he knew she had. He remembered. Years earlier, he now remembered, the first time they made love, he’d asked, “How do you handle your feelings?” She had told him, in the tender darkness, that she loved her husband.

  “Why are you doing this with me?”

  “This is this,” she said, “and that is that.”

  It would have been possible early on, with only a little embarrassment, to stop pretending.

  “Don’t you remember me?”

  “Should I? Wait, oh no. Oh no. This can’t be happening. You’re not Eddie Finger, are you?”

  But Eddie didn’t, or couldn’t, stop pretending. Naturally, then, she couldn’t either. He told himself that she didn’t want to be recognized. Why else would she have changed her look? She actually did look different. Time passed. Then it was too late. It was impossible to stop pretending. Too much was invested in the lie, the black hole of their romance into which everything was sucked. He thinks she knew he knew she knew he knew. He couldn’t go on with it. There was too much not to say. He stopped seeing her. “She waits for me in hell,” he says. “We’ll discuss it then. But she’ll have changed her hair, you know what I mean?”

  Breakfast with Henry near campus. A strange woman joined us at the table. She smoked my cigarettes and took my change for her coffee. In her purse she had a fold of bills compressed by a hair clip. “My tuition fee,” she said. Henry smiled and carried on as if she weren’t there. He refused to be inhibited in our conversation. He said one of his colleagues felt happy when he turned fifty because he no longer desired the pretty coeds. He would concentrate on biochemistry, get a lot of work done, not waste time fucking his brains out. Henry laughed. He didn’t believe in this lust for biochemistry. The woman, pretending to study for a German class, looked up from her grammar and said, “I will learn every word.”

  It was cold, windy, beginning to rain. Deborah was afraid she wouldn’t find a taxi. She’d have to walk for blocks in the rain. She didn’t want to go, but her psychotherapist wasn’t charging her anything. A few months back, she told him she couldn’t afford to continue. He lowered the rate to half. Even that became too much for her, so he lowered it to nothing. She stood, collected her things, and pulled on her coat like a kid taking orders from her mother, then fussed with her purse, her scarf, trying to be efficient but making dozens of extra little moves, rebuttoning, untying and retying her scarf, and then reopening her purse to be sure there was enough money for a taxi if she could find one. She wanted to stay, talk som
e more, but couldn’t not go to her psychotherapist. She felt he really needed her.

  Sonny says, “The woman can’t understand any experience not her own. She’s Irish.” She didn’t mean because she’s Irish. She meant thin, practical, cold. She meant not like herself, dark and warm. She meant blond. In effect, the way people talk is what they mean. It is precise and clear — more than mathematics, legal language, or philosophy — and it is not only what they mean, but also all they mean. That’s what it means to mean. Everything else is alienation, except poetry.

  Sonny has green eyes. I can’t not see them.

  Sonny’s teeth are crooked. I can’t not desire to lick them.

  I think of Sonny’s terrible flaws. I love her flaws.

  I’m so furious at Sonny I almost hate her.

  I told Sonny I love her. She said,“I’m a sucker for love.”

  Sonny strides toward me across the room holding something behind her back. Her face is expressionless. Then she raises her hand above her head and I see she is holding her high-heeled shoe. She brings it down, trying to spike the top of my head, but I grab her wrist, wrench her about, shove her away. She falls into the chair and sits as she fell, arms limp, legs sprawled apart. I go to her, drop to my knees, and hug her about the waist. She says, “Intimacy brings out the worst in us,” and then whispers,“I want to pull your whole head into my cunt.”

  We made love all afternoon. Sonny said, “Was it good?” My speech was slurred: “Never in my life …” She said, “I should be compensated.”

  Sonny reads in the paper about a child who was sexually assaulted and murdered. She says quietly, as if to herself, “What are we going to do about sex?”

  We made love all afternoon. Sonny asked, “Was it good?” I said, “Never in my life,” etc. The irrelevance of words, the happiness of being free of all such clothing. I lie on my back. Dumb. Savoring dumbness. My mother said she found my father on his back on the bedroom floor, staring up at her with a dumb little smile on his face, as if it weren’t bad being dead. He’d gone like himself, a sweet gentleman with fine nervous hands, not wanting her to feel distressed. It’s a mystery how one learns to speak, the great achievement of a life. But when the soul speaks — alas — it is no longer the soul that speaks.

  There used to be a desert here. Now there are banks, office buildings, shopping malls, and wide roads striking in all directions, rolling with cars — going away, going away — pressed by unresisting emptiness. Nothing says stay. Nothing speaks to you, except the statue of John Wayne. I waited in front of the terminal building, studying him. (Sonny was late.) Nine feet tall, cast in brownish metal, he wears a cowboy outfit — wide-brimmed hat, gun belt, boots, spurs. The big body, a smidgeon too big for the head, goes lumbering toward the traffic. Beneath his hat is the familiar sunlight-cutting squint and tight dry scowl. He sees no traffic, no concrete or asphalt. He sees the California desert of long ago, the desert of his mind. No woman was ever late for “Duke.”

  The afternoon sky was purest blue, without birds or clouds. It was perfect until planes appeared, flickering specks. I’d hear their engines as they descended. It seemed I’d heard dozens of them. I stopped looking at my watch, stopped waiting for her.

  Light sank into bluer and bluer blue. Air moved in swift, thin currents, like ghostly fibers drawn across my cheeks. John Wayne’s metal face had an underwater glare; eel-like menace. Cars pulled up. Travelers hurried to night flights. She’d been happy to hear from me. “Are you in town?” she cried. Her enthusiasm must have leaked away when she hung up the phone. Maybe she’d checked the mirror and seen something to discourage her; or she’d had an accident driving to the airport. I wasn’t thinking about her when the apparition appeared. “I’ve been looking at you,” it said, “standing right here looking at you.” Sonny’s hair, freshly washed and brushed, released airy strands of light. She shook her head, as if to deny what she couldn’t help believing.

  “You’re very late,” I said.

  “You can beat me.”

  “My plane leaves soon.”

  “Miss your plane.”

  I already knew I would.

  “I didn’t come straight from my office,” she said. “I had to go home first, shower and dress. Look, I’m here. Aren’t you a little happy to see me?” She took my arm, squeezing it as she pressed against my side, saying, “I’m hungry,” walking me away toward her car.

  We ate in a restaurant near the ocean, then went to a bar. An old black man, wearing glasses, played sentimental songs on the piano.

  Sonny said, her hand stroking mine, “Nothing is going to happen. I don’t care how sad you look.”

  “I missed you.”

  “We never got along.” She took a cigarette from my pack and shoved the matchbook toward me.

  “I think about you every day.”

  “What do you think?”

  “What do you suppose?”

  “Nothing is going to happen. Tell me what you think.”

  “Making love to you.”

  “Tell me what you do to me.”

  “It’s hard to say.”

  “Say it.”

  Strolling in the balmy night, we stopped and kissed, holding each other long after the urge subsided. The ocean raved in darkness.

  “Don’t feel me,” she said.

  “You feel good.”

  “Men don’t turn anymore. I go by and that’s all.”

  “Does it matter?”

  “They used to say, ‘Wow.’ ‘Mamma mia.’ Of course it matters. It’s a way of being.”

  “It’s savage.”

  “Nothing else is real.”

  I heard the dull repeated crash along the beach. I smelled the ocean salt on Sonny’s skin.

  She stood at the bathroom mirror, making up her face. Tiny jars of cosmetics clanked against the sink, like stray notes of a wind chime. I sat on the edge of the tub.

  “I hadn’t planned to stay,” I said.

  She didn’t answer at first. She unbuttoned her dress, letting the top fall about her hips, not to be soiled by makeup. She wore no bra. Leaning close to the mirror, she did her eyes, restoring shadows with brush and fingertip. I watched her rebuilding her look, perfecting it. She drew back, studying her work as she said,“I don’t know why you phoned. Anyhow, I don’t care.”

  “Must you say that?”

  “Sad, isn’t it? I used to get excited looking at you. But all you ever wanted was to fuck me. Admit it. Come on, be honest.” She leaned toward the mirror again, speaking to herself. “It’s hard work being beautiful. See this line?”

  “What line?”

  “This line. It wasn’t there last week.”

  In a minute, she’d be out the door, gone. I imagined the empty motel room. I stood, pressed against her back, my cheek against hers in the mirror. I held her breasts. Her mirrored eyes remained blind to me. She said, “I knew you’d do that.”

  “I’ll stay another day.”

  Her blind eyes widened, as if to see what I meant.

  “I don’t want to make you stay. You have your job, your family.” Her tone was principled. She tugged up the top of her dress, buttoned it.

  “It’s what I want.”

  “I don’t want you to do anything you don’t want to do.”

  “We’ll sleep late, then go someplace.”

  “Have a cigarette. We’ll talk. You never really talked to me. Then I’ll get out of here.”

  I held her hand, leading her from the mirror. She sat on the edge of the bed, her legs crossed, and watched me with no expression as I kneeled. I took offher shoes. She let me take off her dress—“No, don’t …”—slowly. Her voice was slithery, labile silk sliding away as she lay back, eyes shut, hands resting on the pillow.

  Ocean made its word.

  Far far away, John Wayne endured the blaze of traffic.

  “Talk,” she whispered.

  “About what?”

  “Why did you phone me?”

  “Why
did you meet me?”

  “What if I didn’t love you anymore?”

  “I’d die.”

  “I’ve been with another man. Are you dying?”

  “Tell me.”

  “He was so handsome he scared me. Do you want to hear?”

  “Yes.”

  “Does it turn you on?”

  “I love your pleasure.”

  “Hold me,” she whispered, then slept, her body fused along my side, breathing as I breathed.

  Ocean fell along the beach.

  I heard the god of night heaving a great sheet and hauling it back, and then heaving it again, trying to make his bed.

  Stories From TO FEEL THESE THINGS (1993) and A GIRL WITH A MONKEY (2000)

  Honeymoon

  ONE SUMMER, at a honeymoon resort in the Catskill mountains, I saw a young woman named Sheila Kahn fall in love with her waiter. She had been married a few hours earlier in the city. This was her first night at dinner. The waiter bent beside her and asked if she wanted the steak or the chicken. She stared at him with big sick eyes. Her husband said, “Sheila?” Three other couples at the table, all just married, looked at Sheila as if waiting for the punch line of a joke. She sat like a dummy.