Karoo

by Steve Tesich

  She ponders my argument as if it were an application to a country club and then says:

  “That’s where you’re wrong, darling.”

  She seems to be sorry to have to be the one to tell me this, but tell it to me she must, because that’s the kind of woman she is. Honest to a fault.

  “Wrong!” I roar. I’m in a bit of a vocal rut. Vocal variety eludes me. I can only roar. “Wrong? What do you mean, I’m wrong? How can I be wrong? Everyone—” I spread my arms wide open and turn my torso left and right, as if trying to embrace every single diner in my rebuttal “—and I mean everyone, everyone has a right to be happy.”

  My manifesto is designed to be greeted by general applause from the sparse but attentive crowd. But, alas, none comes. Not even a polite smattering. What comes instead is Dianah’s reply.

  “No,” she says, “not everyone.” And she says it as if she has not only the common law but the constitutional and the moral law also on her side.

  “A man like you does not have a right to be happy. Not after all the harm you’ve done to others. For you now to sit there and have the nerve to claim a right to happiness is to abandon even the rudiments of being a responsible human being. In your former wretchedness, you were at least worthy of compassion. In your present insistence that you have a right to be happy, you can only inspire contempt from your many victims.”

  “Victims,” I roar. “What victims?”

  “Darling, darling,” she sighs, “my poor, pathetic darling, don’t you realize that everyone you ever get to know becomes your victim? This Lilly person will also become your victim if she’s not already. Every woman, man, and child who was ever touched by your life has become your victim. Yes, even children. Not even children are safe from you. I hate to bring this up in public,” she says, upping the volume of her voice with ease, so that everyone around us can hear just how much she hates bringing this up.

  “But you leave me no choice,” she says. “You and your right to happiness. What about the happiness of that sweet little girl? I don’t know what you did to her and I don’t want to know, but …”

  “What sweet little girl?” I roar. “What’re you talking about?”

  “Laurie. Laurie Dohrn.” She nails the n at the end of Dohrn as if with a hammer.

  I fumble for another cigarette, while the visage of the girl in question flutters like a sail in front of my eyes.

  The way she looked when I picked her up.

  Our limo ride to Cafe Luxembourg.

  The way I felt in the limo.

  The way it all …

  “I don’t know what you did to her and I really don’t want to know. All I know is what she told her mother, and what her mother told me. The poor child was hysterical. She kept saying over and over again how disgusting you were that night. Her word, not mine. How disgusting you were, how wrong it all was and how she never wanted to see you again. This wasn’t one of your sluts, Saul. One of your women. This wasn’t even a grown-up. A child, that’s what she was. A mere child who looked up to you as to a father she adored, and you …”

  She shakes her head. She sighs. She can’t go on. Another dramatic silence ensues.

  Dianah has her audience in the palm of her hand. They’re waiting for the gory details. In the sudden sepulchral silence of the restaurant, there is a sudden, salivating hunger to hear more. There is a craving for the flesh of children.

  Laurie, despite her youth, was not a child, but Dianah’s use of that word and the response of those around us to it have created in an instant an atmosphere almost identical to the one that prevailed at that illfated dinner with Cromwell at Cafe Luxembourg.

  Then and there, Laurie was debauched in person. Here and now, in another restaurant, she is being debauched and devoured by proxy. Everyone wanted a little piece of Laurie that night. Everyone wants a little piece of her this night. I pretended I was drunk then. I’m pretending that I’m drunk now.

  “What in God’s name did you do to her, Saul?” Dianah asks me.

  They all wait for my reply.

  “I can’t remember,” I say.

  I remember it all, of course.

  The way Laurie looked at me. The way Cromwell looked at her. I had the youngest one there. The Cambodian girl. The sight and sound of those little bells.

  “I really can’t remember.”

  My evasion is a disappointment to our onlookers. It makes them angry at me. I had a duty to give them the details.

  “The thing is, Dianah, the thing is this. It’s not a question of what I’ve done in the past and to whom, but rather who I am now. You see, I’m not the same man anymore. I’ve changed.”

  “Changed?” Dianah says and leans back in her seat.

  “Yes, changed.”

  “You?”

  “Me.”

  “I’m all ears, darling. I really am. I’m all eyes too, but since I can’t discern any change in you with my eyes, other than the excess weight you’re putting on, I’m fully prepared to be all ears.” She pauses, smiles, tilts her head to the right and says, “I’m listening.”

  “On the inside,” I tell her. “I’ve changed on the inside.”

  My words, by design, sound shallow and lacking all conviction. Dianah’s raised eyebrows mock me. But I don’t need her to mock me. I am mocking myself for reasons of my own. The more I make it seem that my change is a complete fabrication, the easier it is to see myself as completely changed. The one brings the other into focus.

  “How long have I known you, sweetheart?”

  “Feels like centuries,” I tell her.

  “And in all those years, how often have I heard you tell me about the treasures that lie buried ‘deep, deep inside of you’? How often have you promised to change? How often have you gone through the charade of going on one of your treasure-hunting expeditions to look for the jewels that lie buried in the deep, deep—yes, you’re so very deep, darling—in the deep portions of your soul? Has anyone ever benefited from all that promise that lies buried deep, deep inside of you? I’m not really picking on you, darling, if that’s what you think. I’m really not.”

  She has another bite of venison and another sip of wine and then continues:

  “But you really must face up to the consequences of your character. There is nothing deep, deep inside of you. At least, nothing worthwhile. There really isn’t. If your ship has sunk, sweetheart, as I think it has, then it has sunk empty. So please, have a little respect for my intelligence. Don’t tell me how you’ve changed on the inside while at the same time pursuing what you call your right to happiness with yet another slut.”

  “She’s not a slut. She’s a wonderful woman.”

  “Fine. Let us assume for a moment that she is.”

  “There’s no assuming. She is. She just is.”

  “All right. So be it. She’s a wonderful woman. But can you, before you pass out, can you answer me just one question? What would a wonderful woman see in you, Saul? Surely you’re not a complete fool, darling. So tell me. What is it that you have, or think that you have, to offer to any woman, wonderful or not?”

  I pretend to be stumped by the question.

  She is amused in a merry-eyed and malignant way. Her lips move, as if she’s savoring something she could say but prefers not to.

  It bothers me, this look of hers. Her knowing air. It’s as if she’s come armed this evening with something beyond her usual arsenal.

  I light another cigarette and wonder, should I spill another glass of wine? Should I lean back in my chair and fall backwards to the floor? Or maybe run my fingers through my hair, as if forgetting about the lit cigarette I’m holding, singeing my hair, setting it on fire, as a diversion from the malignancy of her eyes?

  “How well do you know Billy?” she finally asks.

  “We’re very close. Getting closer and closer all the time.”

  “Really?”

  “Yes, really.”

  “Closer to what, darling?”

 
“What the hell is that supposed to mean? ‘Closer to what?’ What are you talking about, Dianah?”

  “It stands to reason, if people are getting closer and closer, that they must be getting closer and closer to something, right?”

  “To each other. To the truth of who we are.”

  By trivializing the word “truth” for her benefit, I experience the beauty and the full meaning of the real truth awaiting me and Billy and Leila in Pittsburgh.

  “Mmmm,” she says, nodding. She’s in such wonderful voice tonight that she can even make her consonants sing. “The truth, is it?”

  “Yes, the truth,” I shout. I can’t roar anymore.

  “Just checking. And this truth is something wonderful, is it?”

  “Ask Billy, if you don’t believe me.”

  “I don’t have to ask Billy anything. He confides in me, you know. He has all along. He had to confide to somebody, and since he had no father to speak of—or to speak to—he confided in me, his mother.”

  “You’re not his real mother, Dianah.” I can’t help saying this. It’s a cheap way to hurt her. I regret it as soon as I say it, but I probably would have regretted it had I not said it.

  “Ah, Saul,” she sighs, and shakes her head. “That’s not like you, darling. To say something like that. Maybe you have changed after all. But let us not stray from the topic at hand, and the topic, I believe, is truth. Of all the people on this planet, you alone seem to have this childlike conception of truth as something wonderful. Probably because you’ve never experienced truth. It’s as if you were separated from truth at birth and have been longing for it ever since, confident that when it finally comes back into your life, it will do so as a loving nurse with soft arms. That’s not how truth works, sweetheart. Billy confides in me. He tells me everything.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean? He tells you everything. Everything what? You seem to want to tell me something, but I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “You don’t?”

  “No, I don’t.”

  She wipes the corners of her mouth with her napkin.

  “I’ll say no more,” she says.

  “Why not?”

  “I don’t want to spoil the surprise.”

  Her lips pinched, her hair aglow, her eyes gleaming with malevolence, she sits across the table from me like an image of Nemesis come to life.

  And then her features soften. The image of Nemesis vanishes. There is pity in her eyes again. For me. Shortly, I know, she will make me an offer.

  The offer comes.

  “Do you know what I think? I think we should go home, darling.”

  She glories in her ability to make such an offer to a man like me after all I’ve done to her. Glories in the act of self-sacrifice she’s making. She’s a marriage martyr, offering to take me back where I belong. To bear me away. Like a cross it is her destiny to bear.

  I know I’m not a mighty cross. Not really a burden to her. Not a blessing, certainly, but not a burden. A lesser cross of some kind. Something small, but always in fashion as a distinctive accessory to her lifestyle. Like a nice little cross, fashioned at Tiffany’s, dangling from her neck on a simple golden chain. A doomed, worthless husband. I would go so well with almost anything.

  The offer sits there, as it were, on the table among the leftovers of our meal.

  It is, in its own way, a tempting offer.

  The great So What of the soul speaks within me and urges me to accept it.

  It’s not Leila or my love for her that makes me resist. Nor is it something called personal integrity, a trait I’ve never had. It is, instead, a dread. The dread of the virtual reality of our marriage. The dread of the virtual life we would live were I to return to her. The dread that when death finally comes, it will be virtual death as well and I will discover that not even death has divorced me from Dianah.

  She awaits my reply.

  I gather myself and, in my very best drunken laughter, I laugh at her and her offer and then say, “I wish I were a Muslim. I love their divorce ceremonies. All they do is this”—I gesture toward her as if blessing her—“I divorce you. I divorce you. I divorce you.”

  I laugh as if my laughter were part of the divorce ceremony I am performing.

  Her face stiffens. She stands up. I remain seated. Her hairdo glows above me like a full moon.

  “I guess there’s nothing left to say, then,” she says.

  “No,” I reply. “Not a thing. But that’s never stopped us before.”

  She stands, and remains standing, looking down at me.

  “I hope you have a wonderful life with your whore,” she finally says. “I really do.”

  “She is not my whore.”

  Her face goes Cubist at my response. Becomes broken-up facets of a single face. A smile detaches itself from the rest of her features and becomes independent, free-floating, ferocious.

  “Whose whore is she, then?” she asks.

  Then she departs. With dignity. With such dignity and grace that I turn in my chair to admire the way she exits the restaurant.

  The show, our show, is over, and our audience, such as they are, are now forced to resume their own lives again, at their own tables.

  My waiter comes with the bill. I look it over the way a drunk might look at the driver’s manual for a rocket ship. I’m in a generous mood. I top the tips I left last time I dined here. If I could, I would leave tips for the diners who have remained.

  Then, ever conscious of the need to be consistent in my portrayal of myself, I get up pretending to be so drunk that I have to hold on to the empty chairs I pass for support.

  My slow departure has a unifying effect on the dozen or so diners scattered around the room. They consult each other with their eyes, as when a doomed but not very dangerous passenger stumbles through a subway car late at night.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  1

  LIKE AN OMEN of good tidings, the weather changed a week before Leila’s return. A new, cool wind began to blow, blowing the heat wave out to sea. Almost overnight, there was an autumnal feeling in the air. The large sailboats docked on the north side of the Seventy-ninth Street marina began sailing away one by one for their winter ports. Leaves on the trees in Riverside Park changed colors. And then one morning, I saw through my living room window a small contingent of geese flying south over the Hudson in a lopsided V formation. I opened the window and the wind blew their ghostly cries into my apartment.

  2

  I fussed for a couple of days getting the apartment and myself ready for Leila’s arrival. A happy time full of happy anticipation. Leila was arriving on Wednesday and since Maria wouldn’t come to clean until Friday, I cleaned the apartment myself. I vacuumed. I changed the sheets and pillowcases on the bed in our bedroom. I put out new towels and washed the old ones. I bought flowers for the dining room table. While cleaning the mirror in the bathroom, I was struck by my own reflection. I looked so happy that I had a hard time recognizing myself.

  3

  In addition to getting the apartment ready for her homecoming, I had a homecoming present waiting for her. I had that sign, held up by the limo driver with her name on it, framed at Lee’s frame shop on West Fifty-seventh Street. I added a couple of words above her name with a black Magic Marker, trying to duplicate the style and size of the letters in her name. The words I added were the ones that would be used in her first screen credit: AND INTRODUCING.

  I made a point of not being at home when she arrived. I stayed in my office until late in the evening and even called the doorman of my building to make sure Leila was there before rushing out of the office and getting a cab.

  I just felt like doing it this way. Going home, having her there already, was my homecoming present to myself.

  4

  I unlocked the door to my apartment quietly and stepped inside. Almost instantly, I caught a scent of her perfume. Maybe it wasn’t perfume at all but just the scent of my apartment being inhabited, not em
pty as I had left it this morning. A wonderful feeling that life was in progress and that I could partake of it.

  Was this, I wondered, what home meant? That all I had to do was announce myself, and life, as if by magic, would begin?

  “Is anybody home?” I called out.

  She ran out of my bedroom like a run of good luck. That’s what she looked like to me. Arms spread out. Lips parted. Smiling and screaming her head off as she ran toward me. She launched herself like a broad jumper from at least five feet away and literally flew into my arms.

  How I managed to catch her, why I didn’t topple over like a bowling pin when her body hit me, I’ll never know. In a long sedentary life devoid of athletic accomplishments, this was my one Olympic moment. I caught her. I staggered backwards, but I caught her and held on.

  5

  She was thrilled with the framed sign, my homecoming gift to her. Thrilled with the words I had added above her name. She walked around the apartment saying, “And introducing, Leila Millar,” in a variety of ways. A couple of times she introduced herself to me. “And introducing, Leila Millar,” she said and extended her hand. I shook it, as if meeting her for the first time. “I’ve heard so much about you,” I told her. “And who are you?” she asked. “Saul,” I said, shaking her hand, “Saul Karoo.”

  6

  She had changed her whole hairdo while in Venice. Its texture. Its color. The brown was now a bleached light brown, almost blond in places. Knowing her aversion to direct sunlight, I knew that it wasn’t caused by the sun.

  Her hair was shorter, rounder, bouncier. She had bangs halfway down her forehead.

  She looked younger. Almost like a coed strolling across the campus. Almost like a complete stranger.

  She was either nervous or overflowing with some newfound exuberance, it was hard to tell which, and easy to mistake one for the other.

  When she brushed her teeth, she did it with vigor, humming along.

  When she sat down, she sat so quickly that the bangs billowed off her forehead.