Impossibly close.
She gripped my arms. Her nails tore into me. Soon we both were burning. Sweat pooled in the ridge of my back as I moved like a tide determined to crash against those ancient rocks.
Then—a moment before—inside, I kept very still. Our bodies moved of their own accord. Hannah’s body was swallowing, digesting all that was mine to give. For those final moments, we existed seamlessly—all memory negated by a desire that both belonged to us and controlled us.
After, we kept very still, like the only two roots of the forest.
The sweat on our bodies dried.
We lay on our backs with our eyes open. I would like to have seen her eyes then. Mine were clear.
Finally she turned to me with great tenderness. She asked if I was hungry. I said I was, and so in the darkness we dressed and slipped out to the car.
The first restaurant we found was mostly empty, but the hostess said they were expecting a large party any minute. She suggested another place. So we left our car where it was and walked.
The sidewalk was very narrow and crowded with plants. It was completely dark and there were no streetlights. Hannah held my hand and led me through. We passed a dozen Craftsman houses from the 1930s. People were inside. We could see them. A couple sat in separate armchairs watching television. They laughed at the same time but did not look at one another. In another house, a small boy sat before a kitchen table. He was peeling an orange. In another, a woman undressed and then turned off the light. I pictured Edward Hopper across the street in a fedora gazing up from the shadows.
When we reached the other restaurant, there was a wedding party at the bar. A band played mediocre but recognizable music, and the guests sang the chorus. The groom was surrounded by his friends. They had loosened their neckties. Each drink had an umbrella in it.
Hannah ordered a cold glass of wine. Our waitress was in high school. She wore makeup. There were several pens tucked into her apron, and her jeans were rolled at the bottom.
We ate the same salad but from different plates. When an entrée of pasta arrived, we ate from the same plate. Then we just sat and held hands under the table.
“Do you think there’s an afterlife?” Hannah said as I signed the check.
“I think we’re in it,” I said, and we left without anyone noticing.
We walked back to our car through the dark suburb. Most of the lights were out by then. I looked for the small boy, but he must have gone to bed.
The next day we continued driving south. We had wrapped some of the food from breakfast in paper towels. The rental car smelled like a hotel. We were wearing the same clothes as yesterday, but our hair smelled of Hannah’s shampoo. Hannah wore shoes she said she hadn’t liked for a long time. They were maroon-and-beige heels. I told her I liked them. I also told her how I had noticed her shoes a few moments after we collided. She looked down at her feet and moved them around.
Hannah was in a better mood. She hadn’t mentioned Jonathan, but whenever she thought about him, I could tell—she became quiet and still, like a statue. In Greek theater, the final breath of each tragic hero transforms the body to marble.
She told me about her life in Los Angeles, and then she wanted to know about New York. She was especially interested in Central Park. She’d heard there were parrots there. I told her the parrots were in Brooklyn.
I told her about my recent concert. The Central Park Conservancy had given me a “key” to the park. One of the benefits of possessing this key was a complimentary carriage ride. I recalled how I stood in line behind a man and his daughter. The little girl was about three years old. She had Cinderella clips in her hair. She was very excited that soon she would be riding in a carriage with her father. Her father bent down to her level to tell her things. Then he whispered something to her and she put her hands on his cheeks. Then I heard the girl remind her father that she was wearing underpants—that she wasn’t young anymore.
The carriage attendant, who was watching a small television, hung up his cell phone, then stood up from his chair and informed everyone that the horse was very tired and would have to take a long break soon—so there would be only three more rides. The father and the girl were fourth in line. The girl tugged on her father’s jacket and asked what the man had said. The father put his hand on her head but didn’t say anything. The father looked around and sighed. His daughter asked him to tell her more about the horse.
“Has Cinderella ever ridden on a horse? Or does she just ride in the carriage?”
And then suddenly two women in sweat suits who were third in line walked away. The father grabbed his daughter’s hand and they moved up one space. The daughter asked if the horse was married and if it liked apples.
One of the women who had walked away told her friend that she was tired and wanted to go back to the hotel. Her friend laughed and they held each other’s arms.
Hannah thought it was a nice story. Then we passed what I thought were sea lions. They were sea elephants, and Hannah made me stop so she could take photographs.
Every forty miles we would stop, either to walk around or smoke cigarettes. We even kissed a few times.
I had a concert in Phoenix in two days. I wondered if the city was named after the mythic bird that rose from the ashes. Hannah said it had to be.
When it got dark, I thought we could take blankets from the trunk and build a fire on the beach. I pulled into the parking lot of a convenience store and suggested that we walk across to the beach so that no one would know we were there. Hannah thought it was a clever idea, and I went inside to give the cashier twenty dollars. He seemed pleased with the arrangement.
The beach was much cooler than we’d imagined, but it felt good because, after parking, we kissed in the car for twenty minutes with the air-conditioning off. Hannah moved her neck when I kissed it, guiding my mouth into all the spaces she wanted to feel me.
I wasn’t able to build a fire because the air was too damp. It got quite cold too. So we just lay under the blankets and held one another. I could feel her hair pressed against my neck. Her body fit perfectly with mine. She pulled her legs up. We lay very still, making outlines in the sand. In the background, waves pounded a scatter of rocks not far out.
I woke at dawn. It was still cold, but the air felt soft and fresh in my throat. Hannah was nowhere to be seen. I sat up and looked around. The beach was deserted. I wondered if she had gone back to the car to get warm. I decided to look for her, and then saw her erect body a few hundred yards away on the bluff. She was flying a kite.
When I reached her, the wind had blown back her hair. The wind was blowing so hard her eyes watered.
At first I thought I’d just sit and watch.
At her feet lay another kite, already assembled.
“That’s your kite, Monsieur Bonnet,” she said without looking at me.
I unfurled the line quickly, and Hannah told me to start on the beach and then run up the bluff in order to launch it. I tumble-ran down the bluff.
I held out the kite and hit the bluff running. My kite took easily.
It was exhilarating. I had not flown a kite in thirty years. The force pulling on me was more powerful than I could have imagined. But I was the one who held on. I was not captive but captor.
We flew our kites for most of the morning, occasionally glancing at one another.
Then Hannah let her kite go.
It quickly rose, twisting brilliantly against the climbing sun.
Allez, I thought.
And my fingers released the strings of my own kite.
The force we had held fast against our bodies abruptly ceased.
The kites tore through the heavens. They were soon nothing more than two specks of color. And then both disappeared from our sight. Even though we knew they were out there, there was no way to ever bring them back.
Six months later I played for one night only in Paris. Instead of staying at the hotel, I rented a car and drove home to Noyant. I arrived
about six o’clock in the morning. There were birds everywhere and the roads were empty. I sat with the baker in his small cake shop. I told him the whole story of how I collided with Hannah at a hotel in California. I wanted to explain why I hadn’t been in touch for several months and also to confess how happiness still felt remote—as though I were watching it happen to someone else. It was a cool morning. Children trudged to school, not completely awake. The sky outside was rubbed gray. Clouds passed like open hands. The sky would soon be full of falling drops. The baker sat with me and dried his hands on his apron. His wife joined him from the back. I could smell fresh mushrooms. The radio was on.
The baker gathered my hands in his and told me how glad he was I hadn’t been in touch—and that I must promise to stop sending stones. I suddenly felt very selfish and vain. I shrank from him. I pulled my hands away.
But then he said: “Bruno—we lost a daughter—we don’t want to lose a son.”
“That is what you would have been to us,” his wife said.
“That is what you have become to us,” the baker said and took his wife’s hand.
“Send postcards from now on,” he said. “No more stones, eh?”
Before I went to see my parents, the baker’s wife suggested that when Hannah comes to France, perhaps I might introduce them to her. Perhaps they might make her a cake and serve it to her in the shop with a bowl of steaming coffee—that we might just be four people sitting down to a small meal in the evening.
XI
ALMOST A YEAR AFTER I met Hannah, the birdman died. His obituary was one of the longest ever printed in the Los Angeles Times. His life was unlike any of the rumors. There was a candlelight vigil in the park attended by thousands of people. Instead of birds, there were helicopters.
But I was far away in the middle of France, back in Noyant at the shop eating cakes with an old man and his wife. Children peered in at us through misty windows. They rubbed their mittens on the glass and talked loudly. They were excited because it was the first afternoon that bicycles would be sold against the church wall.
It was snowing hard. The baker was very round and his apron fit snugly about his middle. He went into the kitchen and then quickly reappeared with a tray of pastry scraps. The children saw him coming and stood by the door. Then we saw arms reaching for the tray and heard a chorus of “Merci, Monsieur.” When he came back in, there were snowflakes on his shoulders.
“They expect it now.” He shrugged. “I’ve been feeding them since they were the size of baguettes.”
The baker’s wife laughed.
“They call him the children’s baker,” she said.
The baker went behind the counter and poured himself a small glass of brandy.
He looked at Hannah for a long time.
Then he walked over and kissed the top of her head.
The baker’s wife stared out through the window—at the world that lay beyond it and the mysterious place beyond that.
When it started to get dark, Hannah and I left the shop. Bicycles were being wheeled home in the snow. Old women left bricks of cake on one another’s doorsteps. The butcher was dressed up like Santa Claus.
Children peered out into the night from upstairs windows. And for several kilometers Hannah and I waded through snowy fields, past old gates and fallen trees, laughing and calling out as our bodies disappeared from view.
The shadows remained.
Gifts from the fallen, not lessening our happiness but guiding it, deepening it, and filling us with the passion we would need to sustain our love in the coming days.
A gentle reminder that what we have is already lost.
Tiger, Tiger
WHEN I FIRST SAW Jennifer, I thought she was dead. She was lying facedown on the couch. The curtains were not drawn. Her naked body soaked up the falling moonlight and her back glowed.
Jennifer was Brian’s mother. When he frantically turned her over, she moaned. Then her arm flew back, viciously but at nothing. Brian told me to call 911, but Jennifer screamed at him not to. Brian switched on a lamp. He kept his distance and said, “Mom, Mom.” Then he asked where Dad was. She moaned again. Neither of us knew what to do.
Brian fetched a bathrobe and laid it across her back. She sat up, then pulled it around herself weakly. The robe was too big and gaped in several places. One of her breasts was visible. I know Brian could see it. It was like an old ashen bird. I made coffee without asking. There was cake in the refrigerator. It said “Tate’s Bakery” on the box. I cut the string. With the same knife I cut three equal pieces. We ate and drank in silence. Jennifer swallowed each forkful quietly; my yoga instructor would have called her mindful. She shook her head from side to side. Then Brian and I watched as Jennifer buried her face in her hands as though she were watching a slide show of her life projected across her palms.
On the carpet next to Jennifer’s clothes were several brochures for new cars. There was also a wedding band and a glass of something that had been knocked over. The contents of the glass had dried into the carpet and looked like a map of Italy.
We sat in silence; a forced intimacy, like three strangers sheltering under a doorway in pouring rain.
I remembered a childhood dream that went like this: The night before something exciting, such as going on vacation or a birthday party, I would dream of accidentally sleeping through the whole thing. In the dream I would believe I had missed everything—that the event was over; it had taken place without me.
Brian and I had been together for eighteen months when his parents decided they wanted to meet me. I was indifferent. I was thirty-four and settled in a practice with several other doctors. I didn’t care about living up to their expectations. I got tired of all that after I entered medical school and started clumsily slicing my way through cadavers. I come into contact with life and death on a daily basis, but not through ailing retirees battling heart disease and lamenting their crumbling bones but through children, who are never to blame for anything that happens to them. I wanted to be a pediatrician from the start.
Countless children have waited outside my office with my secretary, Lauren, a southern redhead with flawless skin. I explain to parents the problem, the procedure, and the risk—in that order. The lone parent never cries, but couples do, even if the prognosis is positive. As they console one another, I often think of the little head swiveling around the waiting room, reading a book about boats, or looking at a plant, or staring at Lauren, unaware of the long and often arduous journey that some force in the universe has chosen for them.
It doesn’t do children any good to see their parents upset, and so I sometimes let the child take Lauren out for ice cream.
Several years ago, Brian’s parents bought a summerhouse in Hampton Bays. I personally don’t like Long Island. It’s overpopulated and people find safety through excess. The goal of life seems to revolve around ownership and luxury—just as it did for the English four hundred years ago. It’s everything my parents were against in the 1960s. Either America has changed significantly in the last decade or overeducation has left me cynical. So many revere a vehicle like the Hummer and other glorified farm equipment while spending their lives in ignorance of how their own organs work. We plead with God to spare us from disease, while consciously filling our bodies with toxins.
I don’t much like the Hamptons either. In the years I have been going out there, it’s become a police state—and the police are paid handsomely for what amounts to guarding the estates of a few homegrown aristocrats.
Perhaps you wouldn’t think my views extreme if I explained that my parents are from Oregon. I grew up wandering misty fields and sketching cows. My mother knitted clothes and my father built my one and only dollhouse in his workshop. My town is staunchly Democratic and well known as a haven for lesbians—imagine coffee shops and furniture stores run by tattooed women who bake upside-down cake for one another.
They both visited once. My mother feels abandoned by me, her only child. But then she was
always strange—somehow detached at key moments. When I was in high school, I put it down to menopause, but now I think it’s something that’s been long-standing since childhood. My father would never say anything critical to her—he would just rub his chin or rub her hand. My father spent his life rubbing things, like Aladdin.
Of course, my parents didn’t understand the Hamptons when they visited, the summer before I met Brian. Especially my father, who became flustered when we were stopped at a beach checkpoint and told we had to pay the town a fee in order to park at the ocean. My father told the teenage attendant that the Town of Southampton was no better than the mafia. But then people behind us started honking. Over dinner at a lobster shack close to where the fishing boats dock, my father said we would have been better off under the British. My mother said that if the British had retained the colonies, the only difference would be that everyone would have bad teeth. The waitress overheard and laughed. She gave my father a beer on the house and told him to cheer up.
On the way back to the city my father looked strangely sad. I think he was going through something painful that he couldn’t talk to my mother about. I wish I’d asked. He died last year.
After that long visit, the novelty of upper-middle-class New York life wore off and I appreciated the city for what it was, an indifferent, throbbing pulse with an infinite number of chances to reinvent yourself.
It was sweet of Alan and Jennifer, Brian’s parents, to say I was the first of their son’s girlfriends to be asked out to their summerhouse in Hampton Bays. But they quickly ruined it by saying they only wanted to meet the ones he was serious about—as though the less serious ones were meaningless. Alan and Jennifer referred often to their summerhouse when they left messages on Brian’s machine, which led me to suspect they’d grown up poor. Actually they hadn’t. Jennifer was the daughter of a real estate husband-and-wife team from Garden City. Alan was the son of a Jewish tailor from the Lower East Side who knew how to save money and collect secrets while he measured in-seams. Brian said his grandfather’s knowledge of clients’ personal lives helped get Alan into a private school where Jews were not particularly welcomed. When Alan’s father died, his few remaining clients on Park Avenue breathed a sigh of relief.
Love Begins in Winter Page 5