Arthur stands up. He hoists a bottle of champagne from its silver bucket. He wraps a napkin around its neck. Expertly he pulls the cork. We applaud the resounding pop. He walks around the table and fills our glasses. He pours an inch into Max’s glass. “You and Daniella can share,” he tells his grandson. He returns to his seat. He clears his throat. He lifts his glass. “As Aristotle once said …”
His family groans. An in-joke.
“Just kidding.” He winks. “Seriously,” he begins, “on the cusp of this new year we have many things to toast. Not least among them,” he bends to my mother, “the enchanting Janet Graham.”
We raise our glasses. “Hear, hear,” we say. I sneak a look at Zenobia. She is smiling noncommittally. Perhaps she likes my mother, sees her not as a usurper but as an ally. Have I got a deal for you, I address her silently. I’ll share my mother if you’ll share your child. I put my hand across Max’s shoulder. The bones are knobby, the hair at the back of his neck is as wispy as cornsilk. I stroke it. He shifts and settles against my arm.
My mother touches Arthur’s velvet sleeve. When she takes her hand away there is a dark mark on the nap. Harriman straightens his already straight tie. “Go on, Dad,” Zenobia says.
Arthur goes on, “Now as Plato once …”
Hisses all around.
“… said I have the best grandson any man could have. Not to mention Daniella, who is, at the very least, unique. And a fine son-in-law, a master of the corporate art.” He pauses. “But in this publish-or-perish world, my congratulations go to two outstanding ladies. Zenobia Haven, whose just-completed manuscript on twentieth-century women in the arts has been accepted by Oxford University Press, and Katinka O’Toole, whose story has been bought by Playboy magazine.”
My mother touches Arthur’s sleeve again. “Playgirl magazine,” she corrects.
“Playgirl,” Arthur says.
“Hear, hear.”We raise our glasses. They sip. I gulp. I think of the Oxford University Press. I think of Playgirl magazine. Arthur is gracious, treating them as if they are siblings equally loved. But they’re not even apples and oranges. More like a child and its flour-filled sack. That’s life, one’s small steps always overtaken by somebody else’s giant ones. I feel bad for my mother, a loser in the daughter sweepstakes. It’s not good enough to have gone to a good school. You need to be published by one. It never ends. But if I feel bad for my mother, she doesn’t look as if she’s feeling bad for herself. To her credit she looks pleased as punch. Zenobia, too. Harriman is studying me, his eyebrow raised.
“What’s a playgirl?” Max asks.
“Never mind,” his father says.
“What do you think?” his mother asks.
Max considers. He tilts his head. “A girl who plays!” He deduces triumphantly. Then adds, “Like Katinka, who knows good jokes!”
Everybody laughs. I blush. Out of the mouths of babes, but I am flattered to know good jokes. Harriman leans toward me. “I say,” he says as if my new Playgirl status sets off a cartoon lightbulb, “are you seeing somebody?”
“Yes,” I say. I look at my mother. “Maybe. No.”
“I’ve got a guy for you. A lawyer in my office. Recently divorced. He may be just your type.”
Which is what? A playboy for a playgirl? A lawyer husband for a lawful wife? A mailman for the mail-obsessed? “I doubt it,” I say. “Not that I’m not grateful,” I add.
“His name’s Jake. I’ll tell him to give you a call.”
We have salad. We have dessert. A chestnut mousse with curls of bittersweet chocolate on the top. Arthur passes my truffles, which my mother has arranged on a Canton plate. There are mints frosted in pale pink. Zenobia talks about her book for the Oxford University Press. The bibliography itself consumes a chapter’s length. Max talks about the dancing class he has just started to attend. He hates it, he complains. The girls are too tall, and besides they’re the kind of girls who, when boys bump into them, are the ones to apologize. Zenobia asks me about my story for which I try not to apologize. We discuss it as if it were something out of Dubliners. Arthur asks about theme, about metaphor. I am diminished by earnestness. I think of my characters: computer nerds, diaper men, UPS women. Zenobia’s characters are real women struggling to make it in a man’s world. Creative geniuses. My women are struggling simply to make a man. Even lumpy Daniella seems more real than anything I have written on the page. I am wrapped in the familiar folds of discouragement. Only thoughts of Louie sustain me from sinking my head into the chestnut mousse.
We have espresso in front of the fire. Then it’s nine-thirty and time to disperse. My mother and Arthur are going to a party at the faculty club. Zenobia and Harriman are going to a senior partner’s house in Dedham. Max is included. There will be a children’s party in the playroom. “As long as there’s no dancing,” says Max. He puts on his jacket and snuggles Daniella under his arm.
“No way are we taking that sack to Dedham,” Harriman says.
“I have to,” Max says.
“You’ll leave it here with your grandfather,” Harriman says.
“But Grandpa’s going out.”
“No one will ever know. No one will ever tell.”
“That’s not the point,”
Zenobia says. She grabs Harriman’s arm. Harriman pulls away. “I’ll be damned if I’m going to explain this ridiculous project to Laurence Adams and his guests. And I certainly don’t want Max to feel like a fool.”
“I won’t feel like a fool, Daddy,” Max implores. “I just can’t leave Daniella.”
“Daniella!” Harriman spits out the word like a mouthful of ground glass.
“Now, Harriman.” Zenobia’s voice is placating. She sounds rehearsed, as if she has made this speech many times.
“I’ll take Daniella,” I say. “I’d love to baby-sit.”
Everybody stares at me. Max grins. Zenobia looks grateful. Harriman relieved. Arthur beams. I feel empowered with the wisdom of Solomon.
“But, Katinka,” my mother says, “you have your own plans.”
I need the wisdom of Solomon both to save the day and not to let her down. “A party in the building. It’s no trouble to bring Daniella,” I explain.
“It is just for one night,” Zenobia adds.
“But you have a date,” my mother persists.
“My date won’t mind.”
My mother raises an eyebrow.
“He’ll be honored.”
“Well, then,” she says. Arthur helps her into her coat. She pulls on her gloves. “Is it somebody special?” she asks me.
If we were alone, she’d be unrelenting in her third degree. She wouldn’t rest until she’d elicited name, college, age, place of birth, Social Security number. But she’s never the Grand Inquisitor in public. I am grateful for the haven of the Havens. “Yes, it’s somebody special” is all I say.
Max hands me Daniella as if he is passing me the Olympic torch. I accept with delicacy. With humility. We, he and I, have a sacred trust. By nine-thirty I am in my own living room. I curl up on my sofa. I take Daniella on my lap. I stroke her lumpy seams. I touch the bump of a staple which once attached her photograph. I am amazed by the feelings of tenderness that rise in me. I tear off her price tag. I finger her bar code. Holding her, I wait for Louie.
4
Louie arrives fashionably late at twenty seconds after ten. I tuck Daniella into a corner of the sofa and rush to the door. “Wow,” he says, “you look beautiful.”
“You, too,” I say though I am not exactly telling the truth. Louie is wearing a tuxedo with lapels wide enough to bridge Arnold Schwarzenegger’s chest. Ruffles edged in black braid cascade down the front of his shirt. Under the hall light, the fabric seems to iridesce. My heart sinks.
Which if our two hearts beat as one, his heart must sense since he says, “Pretty bad, huh?” He hands me a sheaf of carnations.
The carnations are pink and surrounded by unnaturally bright green ferns. They’re the kind of flow
ers you give blue-haired ladies on Mother’s Day. My heart falls to my toes. “Not at all,” I say.
“I knew it was a mistake. I checked with Derek and Gregory, who said the party’s black tie. My mother bought my brother and me these monkey suits for my sister’s wedding. She even took my picture before I left tonight.” Louie examines his reflection in the mirror that hangs over my hall table. This he has to do at an angle since the mirror’s too low for him. He limbos toward it from both sides. He groans. “I look awful.”
“You could never look awful,” I say, this time telling the truth. Clichés burst from me like sneezes: “You’d shine in a barrel. Besides, clothes don’t make the man. It’s what’s underneath that counts.” This last of course is intended to refer to the soul when what I, crass nonspiritual Katinka O’Toole, mean is the body, Louie’s body—Louie’s flesh, muscle, bone. I smooth my own clothes-make-the-man red dress. There have been times in my life—mostly in the past with occasional present-tense relapses—when wearing the wrong clothes was right up there with getting a story rejected. I take Louie’s polyester elbow. “Come on into the living room,” I say.
I point Louie toward the sofa and go find a vase for the carnations. These I arrange and put on the mantel next to my framed postcard of Virginia Woolf and a rusty horseshoe I dug up in my backyard when I was nine.
“And the flowers are all wrong, too,” Louie says, shaking his head. “I should have brought roses or—”
“They’re fine. Perfect. Just right. Couldn’t be better …” I am prepared to go on and on, but Louie stops me.
“I’ve got something else.” He reaches into his pocket and brings out a small package which is wrapped in plain white paper with a little silver bow. Immediately I worry. The package is the size of a ring box, and since I spent every Saturday morning of my childhood at the movies, the scenario is all too familiar.
Thus I am relieved when I pull off the wrapping paper to discover a plastic stamp holder containing a roll of twenty-five-cent James Fenimore Cooper stamps. And I am extremely touched. “Louie,” I exclaim. “I am touched.”
Louie smiles. “I figured you could always use stamps.”
“That’s so thoughtful.”
“Having to send out all those manuscripts.”
“Not to mention the SASEs to make sure I get them back.” I pause. “Which I usually do,” I add.
Louie frowns. “Don’t put yourself down, Katinka. Playgirl didn’t send your story back.”
“Keep reminding me.”
“Besides, I plan to bring you a lot more checks.”
“I hope so.” I pat James Fenimore Cooper’s lithographed brow. “Maybe these will be my lucky stamps.”
“I wanted to get you ones with a writer on them,” he points to my postcard on the mantel, “but they didn’t have any Virginia Woolf.”
That he recognizes Virginia Woolf thrills me. I put my hand on his arm. The man-made fiber of his sleeve is no barrier to the warmth of his God-given flesh. “It’s the perfect gift.”
He covers my hand with his. His fingers stroke mine. “There wasn’t much choice. No thirty-two-cents writers,” he says. “They were out of the Dorothy Parkers. James Fenimore Cooper was the only one in stock.”
“Hmm,” I say. His fingers are like velvet. He tickles my wrist where under its knot of veins my pulse throbs wildly. My thoughts run wild. I wonder if Louie can get stamps at a discount since he works for the post office. I wonder what Zenobia Haven’s pulse does when Harriman touches her wrist. I wonder if Harriman touches her wrist. I wonder if Louie and I will go to bed.
“We read The Last of the Mohicans in high school,” Louie says. “It wasn’t bad.”
“We did, too, that and Silas Marner.”
“Same here.” With his free hand, Louie gives his thigh a how-about-that slap. “Hey, maybe we went to the same school.”
“Impossible. I could never have overlooked you.” He smiles. I smile. We grin and bob like circus clowns. “Do you read a lot?” I finally ask.
Louie nods. He’s spinning circles on my wrist, dots and dashes, a hieroglyph.
“Who’s your favorite writer, Louie?” I ask.
“That’s easy.” He bends his head toward mine. His breath drifts against my cheek like the brush of the thinnest airmail envelope.
“Who?”
“My favorite writer is Katinka O’Toole.” He kisses me. There is no mistletoe to placate, no good mail to celebrate. Louie kisses me of his own free will. His tongue finds mine. His fingers find the top of my Victoria’s Secret camisole. He leans back on the sofa. He pulls me on top of him. Abruptly he sits up. He tugs at the sack of flour. “What’s this?” he asks.
I laugh. I picture another movie scenario: the baby’s cries just as the parents start to make love. “Daniella,” I say. I explain about Daniella, about Max, about single parenthood.
Louie listens. His face is earnest. He doesn’t laugh. He looks so sad. And when he places Daniella on the coffee table, it’s with a gesture of paternal tenderness that reminds me of Max. “I think it’s a good idea,” he says, “this bag of flour.”
I bring out the champagne. Louie opens it. We toast the new year. We toast James Fenimore Cooper. We toast publication. We toast the mail. We toast Daniella. Louie puts his arm around my shoulder. We sit back. We look into my fireplace, its sneakers piled like kindling. Louie nuzzles my ear. “All that’s missing is a fire,” he says.
I tell him about the other apartments, about working fireplaces that receive deliveries of logs as regularly as the mail.
“Let’s do something about that.” Louie kneels at the hearth. He scoops away the sneakers. He squeezes into the opening and pokes his head into the flue.
“You’ll get filthy,” I warn him, having once fiddled around in there and ended up blackened with ash.
“I’ll take off my shirt.” Louie unbuttons his jacket. He unbuttons his shirt.
His skin is golden. The shoulders wide, the waist narrow. His chest is thatched with black curls so fine they could be spun of silk. These taper to a thin line which points like an arrow to the still-buried treasure underneath his sister’s wedding pants. I exhale. I slip to the floor. I put a hand against the sharp edge of his shoulder blade. “Forget fixing the fire,” I say, “these sneakers are plenty hot.”
He laughs. “Oh, Katinka,” he whispers. My earring jiggles. He undoes my dress. There’s no fumbled zipper, no stubborn strap. Louie is a virtuoso. It’s as if he has been doing this forever. The minute I think this, I am aghast. Has he been doing this forever? For the length of time it takes Louie to unroll my pantyhose, I hypothesize his sexual history. What, why, where, with whom?When I get to know him better, if I get to know him better, we’ll trade secrets the way lovers do. But now comes the inevitable realization that I am no longer groping in the back of somebody’s father’s Chevy in Old Town, Maine, with a kid I finger-painted with. I am carrying on with a stranger in Cambridge in the era of sexually transmitted diseases, in the era of AIDS.What is the etiquette, what is the right spoon, what are the right words? I try to remember those public interest ads on TV, the ones in which video stars wink knowingly while saying something sassy yet apropos. I’m stuck. It’s the midterm I haven’t studied for. Lately, except for a few clinically correct interludes, my sex life has been about as quiet as the bed upstairs since the Radcliffe dean came back from India. “Louie…”I begin.
“Don’t worry, Katinka, I’ve come prepared.”
I sigh with relief. I sigh with pleasure. I lean wantonly back and enjoy the remarkable things Louie’s fingers are doing to my breasts. Louie’s tongue dances in my ear. Louie and I lie down on my oakplanked living room floor. The floor is cold. The wood is hard. “This may be romantic,” he whispers, “but actually I prefer the bed.”
I am relieved. I’ve had my share of floors with Seamus and look how that turned out. As for other places, well, my friend Milly tells me that when her kids are at summer camp she and her husb
and do it on their kitchen table. I know her table—peeling Formica and a ragged edge—having stirred Seamus’ shortcomings into many coffee mugs there—and am skeptical. Sometimes originality can be overdone.
In the bedroom there is no time to admire the sheets let alone to look at them. Louie makes some safe-sex adjustments. We fall together. We cleave. We clasp. The earth erupts with the force of a thousand mailbags in a thousand vestibules.
We start again. Our bodies, a marvel of angles and curves, shift into new patterns like the bits and pieces in a kaleidoscope. Our legs entwine; our fingers lock. Our lips tap out masterpieces on each other’s flesh. I kiss the back of Louie’s neck, the hollow in his throat. Louie cups my breast.
Then, smack in the middle of this earth moving, I have a Joycean epiphany—that Louie makes love the way good writers write, gracefully, effortlessly, never blotting a line. There is not a wasted stroke. No writer’s block. He is poetry in motion, language in action. He is a sonnet. He is an epic. He is a haiku. I get carried away with analogy. I turn his arms into adjectives, his penis into a verb. “Don’t stop, don’t stop,” I cry out.
We stop at midnight when my clock radio blasts “Auld Lang Syne.” “Happy New Year,” I tell Louie.
“Happy New Year,” Louie says. “It’s sure off to an incredible start.”
We bring champagne into this bed of damp sheets and musky smells. I sit between Louie’s knees and lean against his chest. He wraps his legs and arms around me, and I am contained inside him like a nested Russian doll. “Wow,” Louie says.
“Wow,” I say. It’s the only word I have to describe something that deserves a Molly Bloom soliloquy.
For a long while we sit there. We finish the bottle of champagne. I run my hand along the length of his leg. I comb my fingers through his toes. I play this little piggy goes to market. I play a Bach fugue. “Your toes, your toes,” I sing.
“My toes?”
“I am into your toes.”
Louie laughs. “Are you one of those—what do they call them— foot … ?”
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