We Are Not Ourselves

by Matthew Thomas

  “I’m not throwing that hard, Dad,” Connell said.

  But she could tell he was. He seemed to be reaching back and giving the throws all his strength. Ed was catching them, but he looked almost frightened at their speed.

  “Slow it down,” Ed said, his voice skirting anger.

  “Why? Can’t catch it?”

  Connell unleashed a throw that came at Ed like a fist. Ed stepped aside and let it sail past. He gave the boy a look and went to retrieve it.

  “That’s enough,” she said when Ed was out of earshot. “Your father asked you to stop throwing so hard.”

  “I’m not! I’m not throwing my hardest.”

  “Just listen to him.”

  “Okay,” he said. “Relax, Mom.”

  Ed looked more defeated than angry. He was at the mercy of the Darwinian logic of an adolescent, and he stood for a minute, seeming to consider his options, then threw the ball to Connell, who snatched it out of the air midhop.

  She could see it before the ball left his hand, the coiled fury in Connell’s body. There was something majestic about the physical changes that turned a boy into a man, the inexorability of the need to advance, to clear away the previous generation and make room for the current one. There was also something terrifying about the impending clash between the males in her life. Neither would come out unscathed.

  Maybe he was angry with his father for yelling at him in the car. Maybe he was upset that his father was having a hard time corralling his throws. Maybe it was that his father had always been a step behind some other fathers. Ed wasn’t just older, he was also old-fashioned, but he and Connell had always had baseball in common. Maybe it was too much for Connell to withstand aging’s incursion into his father’s ability to carry out this ritual. Whatever it was, he put everything he had into the throw, so that as it left his hand she let out a little involuntary gasp.

  It came so fast at Ed that he seemed to freeze in anticipation of it. He didn’t even try to get out of its way. She could see, as time slowed for her observation, that sometime since she’d married him there’d been an attrition in his motor functions. His hand was no longer as fast as his mind. Even from that far away, she could see his eyes widen. The ball struck him square in the chest. He staggered and fell backward, first on his rear, then on his back.

  She shouted and leapt to her feet and started running. Connell did the same. He was on his knees talking to Ed when she got there, and she pushed him aside. Ed was clutching his chest as though he’d had a heart attack. Connell was stammering apologies. He kept trying to get at Ed as she shoved him away. Then Ed was stiff-arming her as he rose to his elbows and looked at both of them.

  “I’m fine, goddammit,” he said. “Let me stand up.”

  As Ed stood, Eileen raised her hand at Connell and held it there, poised to smack him. She could feel the way the three of them were suspended in the moment as though in the relief of a sculpture. Her hand throbbed with the need to connect. Her son almost quivered in anticipation of the blow. She smacked him once, hard, on the face.

  “The boy doesn’t know his own strength,” Ed said, taking hold of her ringing hand. He picked up the ball from the ground. “Get back out there.”

  “Let’s go back to the blanket,” she said quietly.

  “We’ve got a few more throws left.”

  “We don’t have to play anymore,” Connell said to Ed. He wouldn’t look at her.

  “We’re not done,” Ed said.

  “Ed,” she pleaded, uncomfortable with every possibility she could imagine.

  “Have a seat,” he said, pounding his glove. “Get going,” he said to Connell.

  Connell walked out halfheartedly. Ed threw it to him and he lobbed it back.

  “Harder!” Ed said.

  Connell threw again with less force than he could have.

  “Harder!” Ed yelled. “Air it out!”

  • • •

  That night, as they lay in bed, Eileen could see, at the V of his undershirt, the mark the baseball had made on his chest. She ran her hand over the spot; he picked her hand up in an oddly vertical way, as though lifting the cover to a butter dish, and moved it away in one swift motion.

  They lay in silence, both flat on their backs, not an inch of their bodies touching, their arms flush against their sides, as though they were mummified. Her hand against her own thigh still registered a ghostly vibration of the smack she’d given Connell.

  No matter how much they’d fought, the bedroom had always been an inviolate space. She could express things there that she couldn’t express elsewhere. She could cuddle up to him in a way that would have surprised the nurses she supervised. There was something old-fashioned, she knew, in the way she waited for him to take the lead. He’d never had a problem doing so. Touch was their high ground when the slick cliffs of words proved treacherous.

  “I have a confession to make,” she said. “Yesterday, when I said I was with Cindy, I was really looking at houses.”

  He gave her an irritated look and then shut his eyes as if he were sleeping. “I don’t know why you’re obsessed with leaving,” he said. “I like it here.”

  “How can you say that? You’re not even here. You spend all your time on the couch. You could be in a sensory-deprivation chamber. You put those headphones on and don’t hear the horns honking or the car stereos pumping. I do all the grocery shopping, so you don’t get jostled in the aisles of Key Food and you don’t have to deal with the checkout girls not speaking English. You’re not a woman, so you don’t have to fear for your safety after dark.”

  “Now’s not a good time,” he said.

  “It is too a good time. Connell’s done at St. Joan’s. Haven’t we been in this hellhole long enough?”

  “Jesus,” he said, finally opening his eyes. “Who are you all of a sudden?”

  “I was fine with it until recently. But now it feels like some pressure is going to cave my head in.”

  “I’ve been engaged in a project of recuperation, of rejuvenation,” he said, as if he’d been having a different conversation entirely. “I’ve become preoccupied lately with things I haven’t done. I didn’t want that pile of records staring at me. So I decided to take action, even if it wasn’t popular with you, or Connell, or the chattering classes of your friends.”

  She burned to hear him talk of her friends. She hadn’t said a word to them about how he was behaving, afraid as she was to hear what they might have to say.

  “It’s time I did some things for myself,” he said.

  She should have been furious. Do things for himself? What about all the sacrifices she’d made to get him through graduate school? But his speech sounded vaguely rehearsed. Something rattled around in it, like a dead tooth that hadn’t fallen out. Was it that he didn’t believe it himself?

  “I can’t live like this forever,” she said.

  “It’s almost summer. I’m going to have more time to fix this place up. I’ve got projects in mind. I can revamp the garage. I can paint the house.”

  “Can you bring back our old neighbors? Can you drown out the noise?” She smirked. “For the rest of us, I mean. You’re doing a fine job of doing it for yourself. Can you give us a lawn in front?”

  “You need to relax.”

  “Don’t tell me what I need. And don’t patronize me. Not when you’ve been half-crazy yourself. This all started when you started going crazy, come to think of it.”

  “Things are going to get better now.” He reached to stroke her hair. Now it was her turn to recoil from his touch.

  “I want you to go with me. Just come to look at them with me. I hate going alone.”

  “What’s the point of looking if we’re staying put? I’m going to fix this place up.”

  It was like talking to a child. She felt something in her snap. “You may be staying here,” she said slowly. “But I can’t.”

  “And I can’t leave. I told you.”

  “You can’t go back in the womb
, Ed.”

  “Don’t be a bitch.”

  He’d never called her that in all their years together. She looked at him savagely.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “I didn’t mean that.”

  She ground her teeth. “Don’t talk filth to me,” she said, practically hissing. “You want to talk that way to a woman, get a girlfriend. Is that what this is about? This mooning, this philosophical mumbo jumbo? Is there a girl in the neighborhood you can’t bear to leave? A chiquita?”

  Ed rolled over. “Good night,” he said.

  She wasn’t going to be the one to break the silence. She lay there turning her ring on her swollen finger, chafing at the discomfort of its digging into her skin. The salty corned beef she’d cooked for dinner had made her fingers expand as if they’d been inflated. She wanted the ring off, not so much because of the discomfort but just to have it off, just so that Ed wouldn’t have any claim on her at the moment, even if he didn’t know he didn’t, but she couldn’t get it past her knuckle.

  “You’re all wrong,” Ed said after a while. She felt his hand between her shoulder blades. “There’s no girl. You’re my only girl. You know I adore you.”

  She didn’t turn over. She stared at the handles on the chest of drawers. “Then why won’t you do this for me?”

  He slapped at the bed in frustration. She felt it shake. “I can’t right now,” he said. “I just want to stay in place.”

  “That’s what the suburbs are for—staying in place.” He didn’t respond. “Honey, listen. Is everything all right with you? Really? You don’t seem yourself lately.”

  “I’m fine. It’s just been a long year.”

  They lay in silence again. Finally she turned to him. “We wouldn’t be moving right away,” she said. “It takes months to move. Maybe even more than a year.”

  “I just can’t!” he said, pounding the pillow. “Don’t you hear me?”

  She fooled with the little raised flower at the front of her camisole, to disperse the humiliation she felt at being spoken to that way.

  “I’m not going to stop looking, and I’m not going to sell the house out from under you, Ed. I need your consent.”

  “I’m going to work on the house this summer,” he said. “Maybe you’ll want to stay after that.”

  “Do it if it makes you happy,” she said. “But don’t go thinking it’ll make a difference. You can’t put out a fire with a thimbleful of water.”

  23

  Eileen went in Gloria’s car. One house had six bedrooms, more space than she’d ever imagined in even her most lavish dreams of dinner parties and extended visits, and she wanted Gloria to leave her there to sleep on the floor in the master bedroom and wake in the night to roam the dark spaces like a watchman in an empty office building. She registered her approval of touches Gloria pointed out, the beauty of which she needed no vocabulary to understand. It was impossible not to be enchanted by the exquisite good taste of the wood running everywhere, the quiet granite of the countertops.

  “I want to see as many houses as I can,” she said giddily as they left. “I want to take them all in.”

  Gloria was a willing enough conspirator that Eileen allowed herself to relax. She’d been afraid of wasting the agent’s time, but Gloria did such a good job of projecting professional aplomb that Eileen decided to believe in the durability of her patience. Gloria would tell her the price on the way and what she thought they could get them down to. Eileen could see Gloria watching her for some reaction that would establish benchmarks to strive for, and she gave her none; she merely marveled indiscriminately at the gorgeous interiors, the manicured lawns, the impeccable patios, the huge kitchen windows that might look out, in the future, on grandchildren at play. Every time, Eileen said the same thing: “Wow!” or “Gee!” or “Beautiful!” or some other blandishment that kept Gloria off the trail of what she really felt, which was terror. She dispatched that terror with manic exuberance and affirmation. They would sit in the car for a few minutes talking, then head up to begin another simulation. The afternoon passed in a haze.

  After perhaps the fifth house, Gloria paused before turning the key in the ignition.

  “This is fun, isn’t it?”

  “Enormous fun,” Eileen said. “I could do this all day.”

  “Yes. Well, at some point we have to settle on some parameters.”

  “It’s so hard to say. They’re all so beautiful. Who could ever leave some of these houses, except to move to the others?”

  “I’m pretty sure you’re going to love this next one,” Gloria said determinedly. “I’m not even going to give you the fact sheet. I just want you to react. I want to see what tickles you.”

  They drove to the house, which turned out to be the most impressive yet. It was a gray brick center hall colonial—she knew that term now—set high off the road, with a front lawn that sloped gently downward. It had long black shutters, a gorgeous front porch, and a room off to the side with floor-to-ceiling glass windows. It must have had three times the space of the floor they inhabited in their house. After they’d walked through it, Eileen studiously wide-eyed the whole time, Gloria led her to the porch.

  “Do you mind sitting for a minute?”

  “Not at all,” Eileen said, and took a seat in one of the tall white rockers. Gloria sat on the top step and faced her. It felt as luxurious to sit on the porch as it had seemed it might from the curb.

  Gloria took out a pack of cigarettes. “Care if I smoke?”

  Eileen shook her head.

  “I don’t normally smoke around clients. Believe me, it’s not easy not to.”

  “Please feel free.”

  “I feel comfortable around you,” Gloria said.

  Eileen looked down. Gloria was a working girl, like her. Her shoes were slightly scuffed, and Eileen could tell she painted her nails herself. She wondered what her father would have thought of this performance of hers. Her lip began to tremble.

  “When I said under a million, I think I wasn’t being entirely realistic.”

  “What’s a better number?”

  “You’re not going to like it,” Eileen said.

  “I can work with any number. I just need to know where to start.”

  “I don’t even know if I can convince my husband to move.”

  “Look at you. You’re a beauty. He’ll go wherever you want.”

  “You’re sweet,” she said. She could feel sadness gathering in her chest, as though scattered shards of it were being pulled from her extremities by a powerful magnet.

  “What are we talking about? Eight hundred? Seven?”

  Eileen felt anxious talking about money this explicitly; she felt as if the agent had held a bright light up to her face and could see the imperfections on her skin.

  “More like four,” she said. “Five at the most.”

  “Hoo-wee!” Gloria exhaled a deep puff and stabbed the butt out on the step. “Do you have any idea how much this house is listed at? Take a guess.”

  “Eight hundred thousand.”

  “Nine fifty,” she said with a flourish, like she was calling out someone’s weight at a carnival. Gloria laughed. “We’re going to have to change our strategy.”

  “I’m sorry I’ve wasted your time,” Eileen said miserably.

  “Look, I’ll be straight with you. We’ve wasted some time. But I don’t really mind. I like looking at houses. I’ll find you a good one. One your husband won’t be able to resist.”

  They agreed to go looking again the following week. As she returned Gloria’s hug good-bye, it occurred to her how grateful she was that this woman who weighed her fate in her hands hadn’t humiliated her.

  • • •

  She had an electrolysis appointment scheduled at her regular place in midtown. She didn’t feel like going, but it was impossible to get an appointment, and she had begun to obsess over the little hairs that poked through her top lip and dotted her jawline. She wondered if they were harbingers of greater
changes to come. Lately her skin tingled and itched a little more than usual. She felt warm at odd times; she wasn’t ready to call them hot flashes. Her breasts seemed slightly less full. She’d always had irregular periods, so there wasn’t anything to read into those, but she did have more headaches lately, though it was hard to imagine anyone not having headaches under her circumstances. She wasn’t going to bury her head in the sand when the change began, but she also wasn’t ready to conclude that it had begun before she had firmer proof. In the meantime, she was going to fight to hold on to her beauty as long as she could.

  To avoid the traffic snarl, she took the train. On the way back, the crowd on the 7 platform pressed close, and the train offered no relief. At every stop the car got more crowded instead of less, until at Seventy-Fourth Street the train bled riders making connections to other lines. The walk home from Eighty-Second Street thrust in her face the horrors of the change. The street had once been the jewel in the neighborhood’s crown. The white stucco storefronts were crisscrossed with wooden planks to give it a Tudor charm—Tudor was another style she recognized now when she saw it—and the streetlamps were made of ornate iron, but now gangs clotted its great arterial expanse, and the mom-and-pop stores had given way to bodegas, check-cashing places, and dollar stores with cheap signs that obscured the old facades. The globes that used to adorn Eighty-Second Street’s lamps were gone. Similar ones could still be found on Pondfield Road in Bronxville, which might have been part of why she was so drawn to the town: it was like a time capsule of Jackson Heights before the collapse.

  As she made her way down the street, a group of young men in sweatshirts and baseball caps—they looked Hispanic to her, but she couldn’t always tell—were heading in her direction, taking up the width of the sidewalk. One of them walked backwards in front of the others, gesturing wildly with his arms outspread as the others clapped and hooted. A collision would ensue unless she went into the street, and she wasn’t about to do that; they should all be able to share the sidewalk. The one with his back to her wasn’t turning around. She decided to stop and hope they would filter around her, like water around a branch lodged between rocks. She held her hands in front of her protectively. The young man reacted too slowly to the wide-eyed looks of his friends and bumped into her.