Solos

by Kitty Burns Florey

  “It’ll just be a bunch of people from the neighborhood who are stuck in the city for the holidays,” he said. “You know—the rejects and weirdos and sociopaths.”

  “Well sure, if you put it that way, I’d love to come,” Emily said. “I guess I’m a little lonely.”

  “Well.” Joe Whack smiled uncomfortably. “Great. I mean—okay, then. Whatever.”

  “What time? And what shall I bring?”

  “Don’t bring a thing. We’re having a big spread, food and drink.” Joe looked momentarily disoriented, as if food and drink were outlandish foreign ideas. “I’ve got an old friend staying with me—just moved here from upstate. Maybe you’ve met him in the elevator? A tall guy with long hair? My friend Hart. Anyway, he’s organizing the whole thing. We’re expecting about twenty people, maybe. Or more. Or possibly less. Hard to say.”

  “I see.”

  “So plan to come around nine.” The elevator door opened, and he pointed down the hall. “Right down there. 4-B.”

  Joe got off, giving her another awkward smile, and Emily ascended to the fifth floor thoughtfully. She had told two lies to a man she hardly knew: She wouldn’t love to go to the party, she would sort of like to go, maybe. And she wasn’t a little lonely, she was very lonely. She had spoken as if the party would somehow cancel out the loneliness, but in her heart she doubted that was the case.

  In fact, it would probably reinforce it, as parties do.

  She let herself into her own apartment, made herself an eggnog-and-rum, sliced a piece of fruitcake, and sat down with Harry and Izzy and a book. After a while, Hattie called to thank her for the cookies, and her brother Milo called, and Gene Rae called from Kurt’s parents’ place in Vermont. All this cheered her up so much that when nine o’clock finally rolled around, she put on her good black dress and her sparkly red earrings, and walked down the two flights to 4-B.

  8

  Was it a rat i saw?

  (October–November 2002)

  Lamont opened the Tragedy Club on Berry Street at the moment 1999 flipped over and became 2000. It was conceived originally as a place that would present what Lamont whimsically called stand-up tragics who would “make people cry, make them think, make them feel.” But early into the new century, Lamont realized there just weren’t a lot of stand-up tragics in New York who could make people weep into their beer. The Tragedy Club evolved into a comfortable bar serving cheap drinks and snacks with, occasionally, a poet or storyteller sitting on a stool under the spotlight.

  But the name stuck, and nearly two years later, it is a huge success. The place has become a curiosity that people from New Jersey and Germany and Japan include on their tour of the sights of Williamsburg, and it is packed every Saturday night.

  The Trollope group meets there on the last Tuesday of each month, and they usually sit at a large table in back because, even midweek, the bar area is crowded. When Emily and Marcus get there, they see Elliot C. sitting at one end of the bar with a cigarette and a bottle of Bud in front of him. Although the night is chilly, he is wearing a short-sleeved black T-shirt that shows his bulging biceps. He doesn’t look at Marcus, so Marcus doesn’t have to say hello to him.

  “Jeez,” Emily says as they make their way to the back. “Crowded.”

  “I used to hate crowds,” Marcus says. “But I stopped when I realized you can’t live here if you hate crowds.

  “Yes, you could,” Emily says. “You could live here in a state of constant loathing.”

  Marcus thinks of his father, who loathes everything no matter where he lives. He wonders if Emily is thinking of him, too; he knows, of course, that she is his father’s ex-wife. He also knows about the Thai food because Saul Smith told him the whole story. What he doesn’t know is why on earth someone like Emily married someone like Hart in the first place. I think she was lonely, Saul said. Sick of being alone. And Hart’s not a bad-looking guy.

  This wasn’t enough for Marcus. He imagines an actual shotgun wedding, Hart and Emily at City Hall with Hart poking a gun in her ribs as she says the vows. Or did he slip some drug into her English Breakfast tea? He wishes he could ask her, but he won’t. He believes their friendship would be over if she knew he was related to Tab Hartwell, even though when Emily mentions his father—which she doesn’t do often—it’s not with loathing and revulsion but with a sort of detached amusement. “My ex was a Trollope fan,” she said once at a meeting, and snorted. “Possibly the world’s most uncivilized person, obsessed with possibly the world’s most civilized novels.” Marcus wanted to hear more, but the group immediately got into a discussion of what exactly she meant by civilized (in regard to Trollope, not Hart), then lost itself in a consideration of the ways in which Trollope tried to reconcile the outward stability of Victorian life with its underlying violence and social chaos.

  This month, the group is discussing Dr. Wortle’s School, Trollope’s fortieth novel, which he famously wrote in twenty-two days in 1879. “‘I do not know that the history of fiction affords another instance of a novel of real merit having been written in twenty-two days,’” Emily quotes a critic as saying.

  “Not to mention a novel of real merit about bigamy,” says Gene Rae.

  “Well, it’s not really bigamy, it’s suspected bigamy,” says Oliver.

  “But isn’t it interesting that Peacocke wants to stick with Ella even if it turns out she’s a bigamist?” asks Gene Rae, and the discussion turns to the changes that were happening in Victorian society in the late 1870s.

  The Trollope group, which Marcus joined over a year ago, still seems to him—Is he crazy? Can this be true of anything but animals?—to be intrinsically good. Individually, its members may be foolish, venal, thoughtless, angst-ridden, but when they’re at the meeting, they are changed, all of them. And why? Because the books are greater than they are, and some of the greatness rubs off. Maybe it’s like religion, Marcus thinks, religion the way it’s supposed to be but hardly ever is. It brings the lot of them together, joined in a devotion to the novels that comes from deep in the heart, a place where Marcus has so often found it hard to dwell. He knows some people consider Trollope a lightweight—Saul, for example, refuses to join a group that reads about, as he puts it, fox-hunting and parsons. Saul belongs to a Kafka group in the Village. And it’s true, Marcus admits, that Trollope doesn’t exactly take an ax to the frozen sea inside.… Maybe he’s more of a lamp-lighter than an axwielder, melting the ice a little, shedding a nice little glow.…

  He looks over at Emily—curly hair, new tweed sweater she ordered off the Web, yellow notebook, special kind of marker (Pentel, black, fine), peep of funny blue zipper under her sweater sleeve. He wants to talk to her about Trollope versus Kafka, so that he’ll know if his image is apt and interesting or a load of crap. “That’s so true, Marcus,” she will say, and her blue eyes will beam at him like Trollope’s lamp. “What a wonderful way to express it.” Or she’ll wrinkle her nose and bunch up her lips and ask him why he’s so weird lately. As he watches her, she looks up from her notebook and says, “I think it’s time to talk about the dog,” and there is a little chorus of agreement, in which Marcus joins.

  Near the beginning of the novel, Dr. Wortle’s wife and daughter take a walk by the river with Neptune, the family dog, and a couple of small boys from the school. Imagine “a pretty little woman,” as Trollope describes her, and her even prettier teenage daughter, Mary, both in pastel dresses, carrying parasols to keep off the sun; the boys in knee britches and loose shirts; and the big shaggy Newfoundland who loves to “romp”—Trollope’s word.

  One of the boys is a young baronet, heir to a fabulous fortune. As the children (clearly a little out of control; Mrs. Wortle is always telling them to slow down) run up the hill that overlooks the river, the dog leaps playfully on the baronet and pushes him over the cliff and straight into the river—a sort of reverse Lassie. Mrs. Wortle promptly faints, but fortunately Mr. Peacocke—the same man who will soon be faced with the apparent bigamy of
his wife—happens to be walking near the river, jumps in, and pulls the young heir out of the water with no harm done.

  Luther says, “Well, it seems to me that the first question is, why did that blasted woman faint? And the second is, what was Mary Wortle doing?”

  “Luther, the answers are obvious,” Gene Rae says crisply. “In those days, women didn’t do anything in emergencies. They expected some man to fix things, while they either screamed or fainted.”

  “I wonder if that’s really true or if it’s just true in the novels of the period,” says Luther.

  “Haven’t we decided that Trollope is a pretty realistic writer?” Pat interjects. “I mean, in terms of depicting the times?”

  “Sure, but he still had his own hang-ups. He was into the whole chivalry thing, which basically means he liked women to keep their place.” Gene Rae can always be expected to raise the question of Trollope’s depiction of women. “You know how he went on and on in The Small House at Allington about how women have to be the weaker sex.”

  “Yeah, but look at the women around him,” says Luther. “His wife was a hot ticket who wouldn’t take any shit from Anthony or anybody else. And his mother was—well, we all know about Fanny! Plus, he was pals with George Eliot, for Christ’s sake. Now there was a formidable woman.”

  “But even the great George Eliot could be meek and super-respectful,” Oliver says. “Always kind of deferring to men even though she was such a giant intellectually.”

  “Well, Mrs. Wortle is no George Eliot,” Luther insists. “She’s a good-hearted lady but basically out of it. When the going gets tough and the kid falls into the river, she faints, like a good Victorian wife. And then they put the kid to bed for two days! He falls into the water, he gets pulled out, they feed him—what?” Lamont finds it and reads: “Sherry negus and sweet jelly.” He looks up. “What the hell’s that? Wine and Jell-o?”

  “Negus is a sort of sweet punch,” Pat says. Pat is fascinated with the domestic minutiae in the novels. When they read Orley Farm, she invited everyone over to her tiny Greenpoint apartment for a reproduction of Mrs. Mason’s Christmas feast, which included turkey with the trimmings, plum pudding, and mince pie, even though in Mrs. Mason’s opinion (overridden by her husband) it’s vulgar to serve plum pudding and mince pie together. “And sweet jelly is probably just jelly,” she said. “Like on bread. It was considered a nutritious food for children.”

  “Okay, they give him the goodies and then make the little fucker stay in bed two days? What’s with these dudes?”

  “Ma Wortle probably took to her bed for three days.”

  Emily sighs. “Look, we’re getting way off the track. Who cares what Mrs. Wortle did? The important thing in the scene is the dog.”

  They all agree, somewhat raucously. Glasses are raised to Neptune the Newfoundland.

  “Isn’t it great,” Marcus says, “that they didn’t blame the dog? I mean, nobody seems to have whacked him or anything for almost killing a baronet. In another kind of novel, that dog could have been shot.”

  “Trollope loved dogs,” Kurt says. “You should read that essay, what’s it called, ‘A Walk in the Woods,’ where he says he always walks with his dog, and if he wants to think he doesn’t bring the dog because it’s too distracting. Can’t you just imagine Anthony out there throwing sticks for his big old Newfie?”

  “How do you know it was a Newfie?”

  “All the dogs in his books are Newfies.”

  “Except the hunting dogs.”

  “Hounds, please. They’re not dogs, they’re hounds! Remember when the American senator looked like such a bozo when he called them dogs?”

  “And don’t forget the poodle in Framley Parsonage. What’s-her-name’s dog?”

  “What was her name?”

  They all try to think of the name of the poodle’s owner. Emily, who is the group’s unofficial secretary, flips back through her notebook. “Oh, what is it, what is it, this is so maddening, it’s right on the tip of my—hah! Dunstable! Miss Dunstable!”

  They toast Miss Dunstable, who had a poodle and who, they remind Gene Rae, is one of Trollope’s smartest and feistiest female characters.

  “But let’s get back to Neptune.”

  “Fanny Trollope’s dog was named Neptune, by the way.”

  “A Newfoundland?”

  “Dunno.” Emily makes a note. “I’ll find out.”

  They discuss the Wortles’ dog: his function in the scene as a way to demonstrate Peacocke’s excellence, his three other appearances in the novel. Then they discuss his probable age and size, and his importance to the happiness of the boys boarding at Dr. Wortle’s school, with whom, Trollope says, Neptune was on friendly terms.

  “Those poor little boys were torn away from their families at much too young an age,” Gene Rae comments. “Such a barbaric practice.” Protectively, she lays a hand on the mound of her stomach that houses Roland, the six-month-old fetus. “And most of them probably had dogs at home—not just parents and siblings. Can you imagine being separated from your beloved dog at, like, seven? Eight? I’ll bet they worshiped that Neptune. He was probably spoiled rotten.”

  “I still wonder about cats,” Kurt says, not irrelevantly. They have searched in vain for a cat in all the novels they’ve read so far. “I thought one might turn up in a school novel.”

  “But no.”

  “Not a one.”

  “Could it be Anthony was not a cat-lover?”

  It is a question they have raised before, but they have been able to find no evidence one way or another. They prefer to believe that cats were such a taken-for-granted part of life chez Trollope that he felt no need to mention them in his books.

  The group always ends with a reading from the novel, so that they can savor the famous “Trollopian cadences” spoken aloud. This month it’s Marcus’s turn, and he reads a page or two from the last chapter, when the Peacocke crisis has been resolved and young Mary Wortle seems to have found the right man in Lord Carstairs:

  I cannot pretend that the reader shall know, as he ought to be made to know, the future fate and fortunes of our personages. They must be left still struggling. But then is not such always in truth the case, even when the happy marriage has been celebrated? Even when, in the course of two rapid years, two normal children make their appearance to gladden the hearts of their parents?

  When he is done, Lamont yells out, “Say it, brother,” as if it’s a prayer meeting, and everyone intones, “Amen.”

  For next time, they decide to read Miss Mackenzie. “Outside of a dog, a book is man’s best friend,” Lamont says.

  “And inside of a dog, it’s too dark to read,” Luther replies.

  The old Groucho joke is their ritual break-up, and they drain their glasses and gather their books and pens and notebooks. As always, they argue with Lamont, who insists the drinks are on the house. He won’t budge, so they leave Fiona the waitress an extra-large tip—as always.

  Emily and Marcus go out through the bar together. Elliot C. is still sitting there, still alone, still not looking in their direction. Carey the bartender is energetically mixing up a pitcher of margaritas for a raucous party at the other end of the bar. Marcus says, “Hi there, Elliot.”

  Elliot turns with an elaborate look of surprise, and Marcus realizes that he has already seen them but pretended not to. “Oh, hey there, Mark. Marcus?”

  “Yeah. And this is Emily.”

  “Right. From the party.”

  “And the park.”

  “How’s your dog?” Emily asks.

  “He’s fine.” Elliot takes a drag on his cigarette, tough-guy style, holding it between thumb and forefinger. “Why wouldn’t he be?” The margarita-drinkers let out sudden loud whoops of laughter and start slapping each other on the back. Elliot C. glares at them, exhaling smoke from the corners of his mean little mouth.

  “Just asking.”

  “My dog is fine.”

  “Does he have a name?”


  Elliot C. shrugs. “Of course he has a name. What kind of question is that?” Showing his sharp teeth, he laughs like a man providing canned laughter for a sitcom sound track. Elliot’s laugh makes Marcus remember his damp handshake.

  When they get out into the cold, Emily says, “I love the Trollope group so much,” and Marcus knows she doesn’t want to speak of Elliot C. “Don’t you?”

  “They’re a great bunch.” Marcus has a hard time saying he “loves” things. “I thought we had a good discussion about Neptune.”

  “Neptune the wonder dog.” Emily takes his arm. “Didn’t you ever have a dog, Marcus? Not even when you were a kid?”

  Marcus hesitates. When Gene Rae said, “Imagine being separated from your beloved dog when you were seven or eight,” he amended, “Or ten,” and thought of Phoebe. The memory of Phoebe is still vivid—her beautiful ivory teeth, her complicated arrangement of black and white fur, her big puppyish paws—and still hurts him. He is horrified to find that tears are stinging the corners of his eyes. He has a sudden image of himself back in Honesdale, walking through the woods where Phoebe is buried and where his mother died. He remembers the smell of the woods, the feel of the spongy earth under his feet, the absolute dark when he curled himself up to sleep at night. Long live the weeds and the wilderness yet. He blinks, and the tears, which for one bad moment had threatened to fall, are held back. “Yeah, I had a dog for a while when I was ten. She got run over.”

  “Oh, shit, Marcus, I’m sorry. What was her name?”

  He takes a breath. “Phoebe was her name.” He hasn’t said it aloud in years. “Phoebe.”

  “Damn it. What a terrible thing. You must have been devastated.”

  “Yeah. My—uh—my father was home when it happened. I wasn’t even there. I didn’t even get to—you know—”

  “Say good-bye to her.”

  “Yeah. She was just—by the time I got home—just gone.”

  Emily stops under a street lamp and looks at him. “What do you mean, gone, Marcus?”

  “Oh well, you know, he—she was buried. He buried her right away. Because—you know.” He broke off. “Anyway, that’s the only dog I ever had.”