The Lost Language of Cranes

by David Leavitt

  She was the mother. She sat at the head of the table, her hands clasped tightly around one another, and watched her son and husband dance around the flame of Winston Penn. She served, and watched them eat a fruit salad with ice cream. Then she got up and began to clear the table. “Let me help you, Mrs. Benjamin,” Winston said at once, and to her surprise, she said, “Yes, that would be nice.” She headed into the kitchen, and Winston followed her, and she smiled to herself, relishing their frustration at having Winston taken away from them. They piled the plates in the sink. “I’ll wash, you dry,” she instructed. And removing her rings, she pulled rubber gloves over her hands, filled the sink with warm water. “That’s a beautiful ring,” Winston said, pointing to her Rome ring—a delicate, bejewelled thing she had found in an antique store off the Via Cavour.

  “Oh, that?” she said. “I remember the morning I bought it. We were living in Rome for a year. Owen and I were out walking with Philip, and we saw this ring in an antique store window, and I loved it, I just loved it, the way you sometimes love a thing, even though you can’t say why.” She smiled. “It was expensive, but Owen said, ‘Come on, Rose. Let’s get it.’ We had some money that year, from a fellowship Owen had won. But I’m talking too much—”

  “Don’t be silly, Mrs. Benjamin.”

  “Call me Rose—” She turned, and smiled up at him. “Rose,” he said, and looked away, and suddenly she knew. It had taken her three minutes to determine what they had been struggling to figure out all night. She wanted to laugh. All through dinner she had stared at Winston warily, suspiciously, thinking him the embodiment of her fate. It wasn’t true. He alone was her comrade, her kind. And somehow it thrilled her, this knowledge that even now Winston could belong to her in a way that he could never belong to either of them.

  “Winston,” she said, and felt herself running the name over her teeth. “Winston. That’s an awfully old-fashioned name for someone as young as you.”

  “I used to pretend I was named after Mr. Churchill,” Winston said, “but the truth is it’s a family name.”

  “I like it,” Rose said. She handed him a pot hot from the bath of suds, steamy, and watched his rough, pinkish hands work the towel over its surface until it shone. A spot of moisture from the sink was spreading over his stomach. There was sweat on his forehead. He had wrists so thick that she imagined she could slip both of her arms through his watchband.

  Suddenly he snapped his fingers and said, “Now I know. All through dinner, Mrs. Benjamin—”

  “Rose.”

  “—Rose. Sorry. All through dinner, I was trying to figure out who you reminded me of, and now I’ve got it. You look like Gene Tierney.”

  Rose laughed. “Gene Tierney? You know Gene Tierney? At your age?”

  “Gene Tierney is the woman of my dreams,” Winston said. “She’s the greatest. I’ve seen every one of her movies. And you look so much like her. You’ve got that same . . . charged quality. That’s the only way to describe it. Charged.”

  “Ha!” Rose tossed her hair out of her eyes. She knew he was watching her rubber-gloved hand move in a slow circle over a skillet.

  Owen and Philip came crashing through the swinging kitchen doors then, grinning. “Mom,” Philip asked, “can I help?”

  “Let me dry, Rose,” Owen said, “don’t make Winston do it.”

  She looked at them both, and suddenly smiled. “You’re right,” she said. “Winston shouldn’t have to do this. Owen, you wash. Philip, you dry.” And she led Winston into the living room, leaving Owen and Philip bewildered before the sink full of pots.

  “You’re the best cook, Rose,” Winston said in the living room. “I haven’t had a meal that good in years.”

  “Thanks.” Suddenly, to her own fury, there were tears in her eyes. She kept smiling as if her life depended on it, turned away so he couldn’t see.

  “Rose,” he said. “Are you okay?”

  “Yes, I’m fine,” she said. “Just fine.” She pulled a tissue from a box, blew her nose. “Just don’t mind me, Winston. Just—don’t pay any attention. There,” she said. “I’m fine. We have coffee. Would you like some?”

  Winston shook his head. “Actually, I should probably be going soon. I’ve got to get ready for my classes tomorrow.” He looked at her, worried, and she said, “You’re a charmer, Winston Penn,” and smiled, and blew her nose again.

  He smiled back. “You are, too, Rose,” he said. “You are, too.” And suddenly, swiftly, he bent down and kissed her on the cheek.

  Then Owen and Philip re-emerged, drying their hands on their pants. “I’m afraid I’ve got to go,” Winston said, putting on the coat Rose held out to him. “Philip, could I give you a lift somewhere?”

  “Sure,” Philip said, and also put on his coat. “Goodbye, Mom.” Then he bent to kiss her cheek, and to her own astonishment Rose found herself reaching out her arms and pulling him toward her, into an embrace he at first resisted out of sheer surprise, then gave in to. “Goodbye, Philip,” she said, and looked at Winston.

  “Goodbye,” he said.

  And now Winston turned to Owen, who stood, his hands still balled up in a towel, a look of vague disappointment in his eyes. “Goodbye, sir,” he said in a tone of mock formality. “I’ll be seeing you tomorrow.”

  “Are you sure you have to go so soon?”

  “Afraid so.”

  “Well, I’m glad you could come tonight, Winston, certainly glad you could come.”

  “I am, too. Thanks for inviting me. Goodbye.”

  “Goodbye,” Owen said.

  Together the young men walked out the door. Rose closed it behind her, did up the locks. When she turned, Owen was sitting on the sofa, his eyes shut, his hands on his forehead.

  “Your mood certainly changes fast,” she said.

  “I’m just tired, that’s all.”

  She took a cloth and began sponging the kitchen table. In the table, her face emerged, clear as in any mirror: a face on the verge of panic. Winston was nothing. It was Owen she had chosen, Owen she would always end up coming back to, no matter how far awry things went. He was her husband.

  He got up now from the sofa, and walked over to her. He was himself again, quiet, slightly absent, and he said to her, “Rose—”

  She smiled. Unexpectedly she reached up and touched his face. He had aged well. This man in his fifties was really not so far from the boy she had loved. They looked at each other, each holding back for the sake of affection the words that must now be spoken, each desperate to prolong this last moment of innocence.

  Then it was over. He sat down on the sofa, and she followed him, walking on to the window, looking out.

  “Well,” he said. “How much have you figured out?”

  She closed her eyes, let the silence stretch out as long as she could bear, and then she turned to him and said, “Everything.”

  Outside, on Second Avenue, pieces of garbage clung to the corners of the building before being swept downtown by the wind. The doorman was helping an elderly woman get out of a cab. One hand clinging to the hat on her head, the other to his arm, she warily stepped into the wind, as if she were afraid it might blow her away. “So you really have a car?” Philip asked.

  “Sure,” Winston said. “Remember, I live in Hoboken.”

  “It’s very nice of you to offer me a ride,” Philip said. “But I really don’t want to take you out of your way.”

  “No place is out of my way,” Winston said, and Philip laughed, not sure what he meant. They walked down Forty-third Street, where Winston’s car, a small red Toyota, was parked. “This is a nice car,” Philip said, and Winston nodded. “It’s little—but once you let her rip, this fucker could beat any Jaguar going around curves.” He turned the key in the ignition, let the car warm up. “Where do you habitate?” he asked.

  “I live on the Upper West Side,” Philip said. “But I wasn’t actually planning on going straight home—I was going to visit a friend of mine, in the East Village.�
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  “That’s cool,” Winston said, pulling out of the parking space.

  “You’re sure?”

  “Sure I’m sure. Like I said, I love to drive, and I don’t get enough of a chance to, now that I’m living here in the greater New York metropolitan area.”

  He honked like a taxi driver, maneuvering the car through the tight side-street traffic. “Are you in a big hurry?” Winston said. “I think I’ll take you on the scenic route.”

  “No, I’m not in a hurry,” said Philip.

  “Good,” Winston said. They turned onto Park Avenue. Winston dodged through a red light, and Philip settled back, grabbing onto the armrest for support. There was a stack of student papers on the back seat, a box of cassettes, and several copies of Milton. Above Philip’s head, taped to the sunvisor, a pretty, dark-eyed girl smiled out of a snapshot.

  “Who’s she?” Philip asked.

  “My girlfriend, Nancy,” Winston said. “Or, I guess I should say, my ex-girlfriend, Nancy, at the moment.” He laughed.

  “Why at the moment?” Philip said.

  Winston shrugged. “Mostly because I’m here and she’s in Dallas,” he said. “Long-distance is hard, you know?”

  “I know.”

  “Well—Nancy’s a nice girl. But I don’t know—Hey, fuck you, you asshole!” he shouted to a taxi, which was attempting to cut in front of him.

  “What’s wrong?” Philip said.

  “Yeah?” said the taxi driver, a thin, scraggly-bearded man wearing a bandanna. “Well, fuck you, buddy, you can just go fuck yourself far as I’m concerned.”

  “And you can eat shit, you shit-wiping moron!” Winston closed the window and put on the gas. “You’ve got to learn to speak the local language,” he said to Philip. They edged in front of the taxi, zooming through a yellow light. “Anyway, as I was saying, Nancy’s a nice girl, but we’ve been together since we were fifteen. Fifteen! That’s a long time. I don’t know; I’m ready to meet someone else, maybe.”

  Philip, still a little dazed from the shouting match, simply nodded. This man-to-man confidence made him uncomfortable. It had been a long time since he’d been in the company of someone who didn’t know or assume he was gay, and he wasn’t sure how to behave. Was it deceptive of him not to tell Winston outright? Would it be construed as a seduction tactic?

  “If you ask me,” he said finally, “I think you’re lucky. A lot of people would like that kind of permanence, a relationship to last their whole lives. I certainly would.”

  “I guess,” Winston said. “But Nancy and I—we were just kids when we started going out. We’ve been together so long I don’t think we could even say what it was we see in each other. See, we’re very different. She’s not really an intellectual at all. Tennis is her thing.”

  He took a sharp left, carrying them west into Harlem. On either side of the street, bits of life glowed from the shadows—a child’s face staring into a garbage-can fire, an old woman doubled over with shopping bags—all in sharp contrast to the sedate East Side streets, which were chill and empty by nine.

  “My secret route,” Winston said, “is New Jersey. I go over the George Washington Bridge and down the other side of the river. That way you not only get the best stretches of driving, you get to see New Jersey. I love New Jersey. I’ve discovered most New Yorkers don’t know the first thing about the wonders of the Garden State. But when I met you, Philip, I said to myself, here’s a guy who can appreciate New Jersey.”

  “Why’d you think that?” Philip asked.

  Winston shrugged. “I could just tell. New Jersey’s not sights. It’s not Ho-Ho-Kus or Lake Hopatcong or the Paramus Mall, though those are all awesome places. No,” he said, “New Jersey is a state of mind.” He revved his throat like an engine. “Just to be in New Jersey, to feel New Jersey, is to experience . . . true cosmic oneness with the universe!” He laughed loudly. “So now,” he said, “I’ve told you all about Nancy—it’s your turn. Come on, ’fess up.”

  “My turn?” Philip said.

  “Yeah, your turn. Come on. Tell me what your relationship status is, as they say out west. It’s no fun if you don’t too.”

  Philip looked out the window. “Well,” he said, “I was seeing someone very seriously for a while. But it ended.”

  “Oh yeah?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Okay,” Winston said, “come on. Tell me about it.” Again, he revved his throat.

  “Not much to tell,” Philip said. “He broke it off and went to live in Paris.”

  “They do that sometimes,” Winston said. “What was the guy’s name? I’ll beat him up. Hey, eat shit, asshole,” he shouted to another taxi that was trying to wriggle by him onto the approach to the George Washington Bridge.

  “So go on,” Winston said.

  Encouraged, Philip went on. They were passing over the George Washington Bridge now, a rage of lights suspended high above the dark river. “Maybe I drove him away,” Philip said. “Or maybe he was just sick of the relationship. Or maybe he really was a selfish jerk. I don’t know.”

  He sighed loudly, and Winston shook his head. “You can never tell,” he said. “Stupidly, somehow, you both end up being right and wrong, in different ways, every time. Now,” he went on, “now, we are in New Jersey.” Like a man possessed, Winston looked around himself, his eyes aflame with what they were absorbing, but in the dark Philip could make out not a single detail. He guessed they were driving through trees.

  “You just feel better in New Jersey,” Winston said, pushing hard on the gas pedal. “And you can drive like an American—fast.” Again he laughed. Reaching behind himself, he pulled a tape cassette from a box on the back seat and plugged it into the stereo. Bruce Springsteen sang “Born in the U.S.A.”

  They sped up, coming dangerously close to the back of a truck. Casually, at the last minute, Winston swept past it, and Philip closed his eyes and grimaced, prepared for death. Winston chuckled. “Did I scare you?” he said.

  “A little,” Philip admitted.

  “Sorry. I get carried away when I listen to the Boss.” They were slowing to a red light. It seemed they had reached a more populated area now—an ugly strip of motels, coffee shops, discount shoe worlds. “Here’s where I eat dinner most nights,” Winston said. “Now you can understand why I enjoyed your mom’s spaghetti so much.”

  “She makes a mean spaghetti,” Philip said. He was silent for a moment. “I hope you had fun tonight,” he said finally. “My parents can be—to say the least—a little strange.”

  “I thought they were great,” Winston said. “Anyway, I think your dad’s great to start with. He’s really one of the awesome bright lights of the Harte School.”

  Philip smiled. “Really?” he said. “You know, I went to Harte for a while.”

  “Oh yeah?”

  “I hated it.”

  “Socially, it’s a tougher place than anyone probably guesses,” Winston said. “The kids are mean and smart, which is worse than mean and dumb, because they play tricks. And almost always it’s the older against the younger.”

  “Do they still tell that story about the kid locked up in the basement?”

  Winston smiled. “Every year. And it’s hard to punish them. Because unlike most schoolkids, they do not believe in the God-given, terror-inspiring authority of the teacher. They’re all so rich, they’ve been raised by their dads to know they’re going to run the world, so what’s a schmucky little peasant of a teacher got coming down on them? They just sit there and don’t say anything, like they aren’t even listening to you, like they own the world. And you know what? They’re right. They do own it. That’s the terrible irony of the place. They really do own the world.” He shook his head.