Equal Affections

by David Leavitt

  And now, in the garden—sunlight, like a miracle. Walter, sweaty and dirty and smiling, is holding in his cupped palms a pile of earth out of which a small shoot of parsley blooms. “Remember the parsley we planted last year?” he says. “This is it. It survived the winter. Isn’t that wonderful?”

  He pulls a dirty sprig off the little plant and with his fingers tucks it between Danny’s teeth. The taste is sweet and gritty, and Danny smiles back.

  “Of course I’ll plant more. Parsley, basil, mint, sage, chervil. I bought them all! Think of the cooking we can do!”

  Danny nods. “I can’t wait, Walt,” he says sincerely. As if in eagerness to make the day come faster, Walter bends down, preparing to reroot the little parsley. But Danny, going back into the kitchen, is hesitant to be too grateful; what if, tomorrow, the weather is cloudy? What if, as so often seems to happen here on the East Coast, it turns out that spring has had a false start and they will have to endure another brief season of snowstorms before the real rebirth of May? In that case, will Walter return to bed, return to the winter ritual of television, computer conversation, videos? Danny hopes not.

  The phone rings. Outside, Walter stops, turns to listen as Danny answers.

  “April Gold, please.” The voice is a woman’s, brusque, and apparently already annoyed at what she assumes will be unconscionable delays.

  “Um, she’s not here,” Danny says. “I’m not expecting her until next week.”

  Walter puts his spade down. He gets up on his knees, which are black with mud, puts his hands on his hips.

  “I was given this number,” the voice says.

  “I’m sorry. I really don’t know what to tell you.”

  “Who is this, please?”

  “Her brother,” Danny says, more sharply than he probably ought to.

  “Jesus,” the woman murmurs, thinking her whisper inaudible.

  “No, the name is Cooper.”

  “There’s no need to be rude. Look, just tell her Irene Gould called. That’s Gould, with a u. It’s most urgent that I speak to her.”

  Danny hangs up before the woman says anything else.

  “What was that?” Walter asks.

  “A bitch.”

  “Calling for April?”

  “I don’t know what the hell April thinks she’s doing, giving these people my number when she’s not supposed to be coming for a week.”

  “Maybe she’s going to be early.”

  “I mean, she treats me like her fucking answering service. She’s done this before, and I’ve warned her.”

  The phone rings again. Alice Klippen, for April. “She’s not here,” Danny says.

  “You can give her this number,” Alice Klippen says, “but she’ll only be able to reach me there between seven and nine-thirty. Before seven I’m at my office—I think she’s got that one already—and after nine-thirty I’ll be at a party with my friend Roz, but wait—no, first we’re going out to dinner, and then to a party, so maybe she should call me at Roz’s place. Oh, but damn, I don’t have the number, and it’s not listed. Okay, listen—have her call Sydney Green on West Twenty-fifth Street—have you got a pencil?”

  “I’m taking it all down,” Danny says.

  “So have her call Sydney Green, who is listed, and ask for Roz Steele’s number, and there’ll be a message from me on Roz’s answering machine telling her where she can reach me. Alice Klippen.”

  “Okay.”

  “You got that all?”

  “I got it.”

  “Great. Thanks. Bye.”

  He hangs up louder than he should.

  “You haven’t written anything down,” Walter says.

  “What can I do? I didn’t have a pencil.”

  “Maybe you should let me answer it next time,” Walter says, and strides into the kitchen. “Gosh, wouldn’t it be great if April really is arriving today?”

  “Great,” Danny says.

  “Aren’t you excited? I mean, she’s your only sister. Aren’t you glad she’s coming?”

  “Well,” Danny says. “I suppose.” He leans against the refrigerator, crosses his arms. He is remembering other times when she arrived on short notice, showing up at his and Walter’s apartment just as they were about to go to bed. No call, just the buzzer ringing, her voice: “Hi, it’s me—”

  “April.”

  “I’m early.”

  Or she had been late. She had stood him up, keeping him hours at airports or restaurants, then calling at four in the morning. “Powderfoot, I’m so sorry, I just couldn’t get away—”

  “What do you mean ‘I suppose’? You are glad she’s coming, aren’t you?”

  Danny stretches his arms behind his head. “Of course I’m glad,” he says. “Of course.”

  “Well, I’m going to take a shower,” Walter says, abandoning, at least for the moment, his half-planted buds. Left alone in the kitchen, Danny scowls at the phone, daring it to ring again and be for her. An old, blistering anger, an old argument ricocheting again through his memory: “I’m not your goddamned answering machine, April!”

  “Danny, where else can I have people call?”

  “I don’t know, but it’s not fair to me. And on top of it, they’re rude.”

  “You know I’d do the same for you, Powderfoot.”

  “Don’t call me that when we’re having a fight.”

  That memory, and others: the van stopped outside a filling station in Nebraska, the wind strong: Danny has been driving for five hours. “But, Powderfoot,” April says, “we have to work out these arrangements before Omaha. You’re the only one who’s expendable.” And months later, New Haven: Danny tells her he is leaving the tour, and she smiles. She seems delighted. As if she can get along without me, he thinks. As if what I’ve given her—all the time I’ve devoted, the shit-work I’ve done—amounts to nothing.

  The phone rings again, and he answers it challengingly. “Who is it?” he demands.

  “Just me,” Iris says. “I wanted to let you boys know, there’s a great special on chicken breasts at King’s, so I bought you four or five packages. It’s good to freeze them, and who knows, I mean, when in the last five years have chicken breasts been under two dollars a pound? Perdue too?”

  “Thanks, Iris,” Danny says. “That was really thoughtful of you.” It occurs to him, at this moment, what an immense virtue thoughtfulness is. Anyway, he is relieved to be talking about chicken breasts, relieved to be reminded of his own detailed life, most facets of which have nothing to do with April. She has not even arrived yet, but since the phone call it has felt to Danny as if an enormous balloon were expanding inside his house, pushing him into an ever-narrowing crevice between balloon wall and house wall. And that crevice is where he must live while April is there, that tiny crevice between her ever-expanding ego and all the rest of his life.

  “It was crazy at the store today. A real madhouse. I remember when this was a small town.”

  “Well, Iris, I could have warned you. King’s on a Saturday.”

  “You have to eat!” Iris says, then sighs. “Oh, well.”

  She hangs up just as Walter is coming out of the bathroom. “Has April called yet?” he asks brightly.

  “No!” Danny shouts, slamming down the phone.

  “I was just asking, you don’t have to get mad!” Walter shakes his head as he towels off, then cheerily hops off to the bedroom to put on clean clothes. Apparently the prospect of April’s arrival has added considerably to his already improved mood. He takes mute pleasure in the way she and her coterie can transform the place into a hive of counterculture exoticism: incense burning in a guest room; pot brownies baking in the oven; women curled together in sleeping bags on the living room floor. New people! Conversation! Company! Apparently Danny’s own relentlessly cheerful presence is just not enough for Walter. From the computer, it seems, he will move on to April. All of which makes Danny angry, as does the knowledge that Walter will treat April reverentially, indulgently when she
arrives. Danny has privately been hoping to teach April a lesson over the course of this visit, but now he fears that Walter will undermine whatever position of strength he attempts to take. He can just see Walter making her bed, doing her laundry, even winking at her across the room—sheets and underwear in hand—as Danny sternly tells her she has to do these things herself this time. She will always find someone; if not him, someone else.

  Soon enough the phone rings again. “I’ll get it,” they both say, but Walter’s hand is quicker. “Hello?” he says. There is a pause, and he smiles and laughs. “Where are you? Really? They’re at Friendly’s,” he reports to Danny, cupping his hand over the mouthpiece. “They’re having Peanut Butter Cup sundaes.”

  “Goodie,” Danny says.

  Again Walter laughs. “They want to know what to do now,” he says.

  “Well, tell them to get the hell over here,” Danny snorts. And to his own chagrin feels excitement, giddiness, delight.

  “Danny says get the hell over here,” Walter dutifully reports. “What? Oh. Okay. She wants to talk to you.” He hands Danny the phone.

  “We’re early,” April says.

  “I know.”

  “Want to know why?”

  “Why?”

  “A cancellation in Rhinebeck.”

  “Ah.”

  “Right now we’re at Friendly’s. I love Friendly’s. I wish Friendly’s was in California.”

  Danny can see her, standing at the pay phone in the back of the big, barnlike Friendly’s. Undoubtedly the old ladies who frequent the place are staring in earnest at her band of oddly dressed accomplices.

  “Well, you know how to get here from Friendly’s,” Danny says.

  “We’ll be there in twenty minutes.”

  “Okay. See you then.”

  “Bye, Powderfoot.”

  “Twenty minutes,” Danny says to Walter. But Walter is gone. Already he is making up beds.

  It is still March. Just a few weeks before the month begins during which the whole world will fill with her name.

  ___________

  “God,” April says, stretching her head back so that the sun will touch her face, “it’s good to be out of that goddamned van.”

  An electric churning noise issues from the kitchen, where Walter is preparing daiquiris. April, dressed in blue jeans and a white blouse embroidered with tiny blue flowers, lies back on one of last summer’s battered chaises, dragged from the garage just a few minutes before her arrival. She is pale and seems to have gained some weight.

  Three are with her: Mikel, the guitarist, a short, pretty, well-muscled woman in running shorts; Leela, the new drummer, a woman older than most of April’s ever-changing band members, tall and reedy and with something of the look of a mild kindergarten teacher; and Paul, the pianist, a man (in and of itself extraordinary, a sign of changing times), indeed, an extraordinarily handsome man, darkly tanned and muscular and shirtless. His body gives off a strong smell as he lifts suitcases from the van, Walter in his shorts running up alongside, offering to help.

  “Powderfoot, honey, do you have any Tab?”

  “You’re early,” Danny says. “I haven’t had a chance to shop. Just Diet Coke.”

  “You know I cannot stand Diet Coke,” April says. “I have a reaction. Just water then.”

  Although the implications are teeming in his head, Danny fixes her a glass of water, with ice and even a slice of lemon, and brings it to her on the porch. Leela is explaining to Walter that she and Mikel won’t be staying with them; they will be taking the van to visit friends in Bucks County. As for Paul, he’s heading by train to New York, to meet his lover, Barney, for a rendezvous. Paul smiles, and Walter looks nervous.

  “But,” April says, “you’re going to have me to yourselves for an entire blissful, restful week before the New York concert. A brief vacation.” And Walter, cheered by this news, smiles again.

  “Thank you, darling,” April says as she takes her glass of water. Like a queen, Danny thinks, lying on her chaise lounge. She has always taken it for granted that he will do her favors, as if asking them really is the prerogative of the older sibling.

  “Ah,” she says. “I can’t tell you how glad I am to be here, Powderfoot. Really glad, no fooling. I am beat. And just think what fun we’ll have this week. We’ll go shopping at the grocery store, and I’ll make cakes and brownies, and we’ll watch TV and eat popcorn.”

  “April,” Danny reminds her, “both Walter and I work.”

  “I could take some time off,” Walter volunteers. “Leave early, that sort of thing.”

  “Well, we’ll have fun at night then. During the day I’ll work, too. You don’t know how long I’ve been waiting for a stretch of time longer than two days in one place. I have this idea for some new songs I’ve been dying to get started on, and I just haven’t had a minute, what with the concerts and all. But now. Yes. Now I’ll have some time.” And she lies back in the sun, smiling slightly, and closes her eyes.

  Leela and Mikel are finishing packing up the van. “So where do you hail from?” Walter asks them.

  “Oregon,” Mikel says.

  “Oakland,” says Leela.

  “And what about you, Paul?”

  Paul is lifting a huge amplifier out of the van and onto their lawn, and Danny thinks he really should ask him whether April is expecting to use their house as a warehouse as well as a hotel.

  He remembers the interest scale.

  “St. Louis.”

  “Well, we’re off,” Leela says, climbing into the passenger seat of the van. “We’ll see you in a week, I guess. Take care.”

  “Aren’t you going to say good-bye to April?” Walter asks.

  “Wouldn’t want to wake her.”

  And indeed, turning, Walter and Danny are astonished to see that April has fallen asleep. Her head tilted to one side, one hand drooping over the edge of the yellow plastic chaise. She is snoring very quietly.

  Chapter 13

  Danny had a cold, and his mother had taken him to the doctor’s office. All around him, children were shuffling, sneezing, snorting, their mothers leafing through out-of-date copies of House & Garden or Family Circle. He had just finished reading Highlights for Children, finished comparing the meticulous behavior of that wonderful boy Gallant with the oafishness of his hideous alter ego, Goofus, when he noticed lying among the magazines a pair of big, bright children’s books with glossy covers, one called Bible Stories and the other Tales for Tots. He picked up the second one; on the cover a red-cheeked, red-haired little girl was feeding an apple to a pony while her freckled brother chased around a puppy with a bright nub of a tongue. The book had a lot of pictures, most in color, which reminded Danny of My Weekly Reader. As he thumbed through it, one of them in particular caught his eye: It was of the freckle-faced little boy on the cover, only now he was lying in a hospital bed with casts on both his arms and one of his legs, and bandages wrapped around his head. Just above his nose the bandages were blotched red. The boy, according to the story, was Timmy, who had been hit by a car. His friend Jimmy comes to visit him, and when he asks how Timmy is, Timmy looks up at him and says, “It’s okay, Jimmy, don’t be frightened, for I know I am loved by the Lord Jesus.” The next picture was of the same hospital bed, only this time empty, the sheets and the pillow slightly rumpled. Jimmy was standing by the bed, looking up at the ceiling and smiling, a large peach-colored hand resting on his shoulder. “Timmy’s body died,” the story concluded, “but his soul went up to Jesus.”

  Danny closed the book. He did not cry. The death of children, at that point, was in and of itself not enough to frighten him; Kenny Schiff, after all, had shot himself while playing with his father’s gun, and Andy Conklin’s brother had died on his bike, and Marisa Wu had gotten leukemia. No, what disturbed him about Tales for Tots was how pretty it made death, how cozy and red-cheeked and freckle-faced. He was only a child himself, and probably he was more shaken than he knew, but reading the story, he felt wel
ling up in himself not fear so much as outrage, that such things should be left around in pediatric waiting rooms, where other children, more vulnerable than he, might read them.

  He tapped Louise’s shoulder. “Mom,” he said.

  “What?”

  “Look.” He handed her the book, watched her eyes move back and forth as she skimmed the story, then widen when she reached the end. She slapped the book shut so loudly that a few women glanced up from their magazines. Then she stood, holding the book in the air, and Danny became worried that she was going to lose her temper and make a scene, or take out her rage on the wrong, undeserving person. She had done these things before.

  “Mom,” he said, “what are you going to do?”

  “Take care of this once and for all.”

  “Mom—”

  But already she had marched up to the nursing station. Peggy Thaxter, the nurse, whom she knew and liked, smiled up at her and said, “Can I help you with something, Louise?”

  “I’d like to know who’s responsible for this—this garbage being left here for little children to read.”

  She slammed the book down on the counter of the nurse’s station, and Peggy Thaxter stepped back.

  “Garbage?” Peggy Thaxter said. Louise opened the book to the story of little Timmy. “My God,” Peggy said as she read it. “I had no idea. They just leave them, you know, those Seventh-Day Adventists, they come by when no one’s looking and leave them so people will buy them. See, there’s a little order form in the back. I never paid much attention to them until now, figured they were harmless, but now that I see, well, Louise, thank you, thank you, thank you for bringing this to our attention; I’ll most certainly make sure Dr. Kerr sees this, and I’m sure he’ll agree, these stories have no place here.”