Love Is a Rebellious Bird

by Elayne Klasson

  “I feel like I need to write for someone, one specific reader,” you answered. “It came to me that it’s you—you’re that person. No one is as sharp a reader as you. I knew that back in sixth grade, when you beat my ass in the reading competition. You’re fast and you remember every word.”

  How could I resist such praise from you? I laughed and said, “Okay. And I’m proud of you. I know you’re going to write a great book.”

  But before we hung up the phone that day, I had one more question, something I’d been wondering ever since your letter first arrived. “Is Lilly reading your work as well?” I asked, in what I hoped was an offhand way. Of course I was flattered to be asked to read your work, but I wanted the honor to be mine alone, not one I shared with Lilly.

  “Ah, Lilly. You know, Lilly is not one for fiction. She’s more of a visual person,” you answered. “She has a great eye for art, but words are simply not her thing. You’re my only reader for now.”

  A visual person? Maybe a better description would be that she was an inarticulate person. Okay, perhaps a bit harsh, but when I learned she would not be reading your work, I was delighted, pleased to come out ahead in any comparison with Lilly. The honor was truly to be mine alone.

  And so, for several years, the manila envelopes flew back and forth between Beacon, New York, and my house in the Oakland Hills. My joy at seeing them was no different than when we’d been at colleges in different parts of the country. And, the envelopes containing your latest work were always fat, like college acceptance letters. It must be said that Elliot Pine was always productive. You had an excellent work ethic and didn’t stop writing until you had produced eight new pages a day—every day, including Sunday. You’d edit what you’d done the day before, rewrite, then go on to produce eight new pages before locking the door of your studio and heading home. You said you barely stopped for lunch, but kept the refrigerator in the studio stocked with cheeses and cold meats purchased from the gourmet grocer in town. You kept a fancy coffee maker there as well. I took those pages and chapters very seriously, reading them late into the night. I’d ponder every word sent in those manila envelopes, editing in the margins and writing a cover sheet of questions and comments, but still always cheering you on. I probably knew your novel more thoroughly than you did yourself.

  Unfortunately, very early, I began to have qualms about the work. This was just a first draft, I kept reminding myself, and I continued to be your cheerleader. The history of the period you wrote about was thorough and seemed accurate. The politics were all there, the social milieu felt right. You were, after all, an excellent researcher and had been a history major at Brown. But the story never took fire. It read more like a graduate student paper about the 1950s, smart and meticulously documented, but with no life. Even more worrying, the characters never became real. I just couldn’t lose myself in the story. The lawyer was stiff and I couldn’t see how the cases he worked on were compelling. Was this the way a legal brief read? How could you have written this? I wondered again and again. You were good, no excellent, at everything you’d ever attempted. And so I kept reading. And remaining hopeful. There was promise, I kept telling myself. The life would be breathed into it later.

  Then, one summer, I found myself alone in the big, empty house. Joseph was working as a junior counselor at a camp near the Russian River. Miriam had started her new job with the studios in LA, but Evan was living in Manhattan, interning with a City College administrator, while he looked for permanent work. I missed Evan. He’d never lived so far away before. I could take some time off and visit him. We could go to some shows—the theater was a passion we both shared.

  Evan seemed glad when I told him I was coming to visit, but he said that the place he’d sublet on the west side was tiny.

  “I don’t want you to be uncomfortable, Mom,” he said. “There’s only a crappy sofa bed.”

  “That’s okay,” I said to my older son. “I’ll stay in a hotel. I want to. Somewhere near your place, so I can see you often, but not get in your hair.”

  “You’re sure, Mom?” he asked, sounding protective. “It’s not a great neighborhood.” When had this happened? When had I stopped worrying about Evan and he started worrying about me? “You’re okay by yourself in a hotel?”

  “Absolutely, sweetheart,” I said. “Remember, I’m the one who traveled around the world with a backpack. It’ll be fun. Tell me which shows you think we’d like. I’ll get us tickets. We’ll go to good restaurants.” I planned the week carefully. Visit my son. Stay in a hotel. Go to some shows. Oh, and I could have a meeting with Elliot. We could talk about the book face-to-face. It all made sense.

  I phoned you at your cottage so I could tell you about the upcoming trip. “I’ll bring your latest chapter with me,” I said. “We can talk about it over a lunch. How does that sound?”

  “Terrific,” you agreed. “Great idea. But, listen, as you were talking, I had another thought. You said you were coming next month. In July? How about a mini high school reunion?”

  “A reunion?” I asked, puzzled.

  “It’s a crazy coincidence, but two of our friends from elementary school are here in New York. They’ve been after me to meet in the city for dinner. You won’t believe who. But if you were here as well, I wouldn’t mind it so much. It’d actually be fun.”

  “From our class?” I asked. “Who?”

  “Yeah. From Pratt Elementary. Roberta Feingold is one,” you said. “Remember Roberta?”

  “God yes, of course,” I answered. “What ever happened to Roberta? I haven’t thought about her in years. Remember how she’d jump up and down, waving her hand frantically in the air, answering questions before she got called on? She drove horrible Miss Schaffer nuts. In high school, she was a really good athlete, remember?” I’d always thought of Roberta with gratitude. She was the first girl to welcome me to the new school when we were ten years old.

  “Yeah, right,” you said. “She had those really long legs. Now she lives upstate in Albany, but comes into the city for her job. She phoned me out of the blue and wants to get together. I’ve been busy, so I put her off. But since you’re coming to New York, a group dinner would be perfect. You were friends, right? What do you suppose Roberta’s doing these days?”

  “Something requiring unlimited energy,” I said. “Remember she did track and field? She went to meets all over Chicago.”

  “I don’t know,” you said. “She didn’t sound bubbly when she phoned, not like I remembered. She sounded serious. Maybe even a little down.”

  “Really? You said there were two people. Who else?”

  “Jordan Orelove, believe it or not. He keeps phoning, too,” you replied. “You know, the guy from temple youth group who played the accordion. Didn’t you used to date Jordan?”

  I groaned. “Jordan? God, yes. I’m embarrassed thinking about it. Remember how everyone would sing the spiritual, ‘I looked over Jordan and what did I see?’”

  Without missing a beat, you finished the song. “They’d say Judith! Everyone would chime in and sing your name. We thought that was the wittiest thing in the world. It cracked us up because you were always all over him.” You laughed. “And his accordion.”

  “Very funny. You shouldn’t talk. Weren’t you all over your girlfriend Rochelle? You couldn’t take your hands off her and her big breasts. So, what’s happened to Jordan?” I asked.

  “He’s a doctor. Kind of prominent. He works for the City Health Department. An AIDS prevention advocate in charge of all the safe-sex ads in the subways and the education campaigns in the schools.”

  “AIDS?” I asked. “Do you think Jordan’s gay?”

  “Yeah,” you answered. “I’m pretty sure he is. In fact, when he called me, I said something stupid. I’d seen his name in New York Magazine a couple of years ago, but I thought I read that he’d died. When I heard from him, I actually said, ‘Jordie, I thought you were dead!’”

  “You didn’t? Elliot, that’s terrible.
”

  “I know. It just slipped out. It was an article about the AIDS crisis in New York, crediting Jordan as one of the first to openly talk about it as an epidemic. All the deaths. I swear to God, I remember reading his name and thinking it said, ‘the late Dr. Jordan Orelove.’ I recognized the name, though, knew it was the same guy from high school and youth group, but I thought it said he’d died.”

  “That’s just awful, Elliot,” I repeated. “Because the article linked him with AIDS, you thought he was dead?”

  “I know. Really stupid,” you admitted. “I’m an asshole. But Jordan didn’t seem upset. He laughed and said, ‘No, Elliot, I’m not dead. Want to have dinner sometime so you can take my pulse?’ I’m not surprised he became a doctor. He was really smart, remember? Maybe he did seem gay in high school. At least a little gay, anyway. Did that cross your mind when you dated him?”

  “That he was gay? I don’t think so,” I said. “My mother always liked Jordan. He had beautiful manners. She thought he was a real gentleman.”

  “Right. A gentleman. Not a barbarian, like me?”

  “She never thought you were a barbarian, Elliot. Just driven. But when Jordan came over, he’d sit and talk to her. He paid attention to her, complimented her, and ate her cookies. It took us forever to get out of the house, but she loved him. And that accordion of his.”

  “When do you think he knew that he was gay?” you wondered. “In high school? Before that?”

  “He sure was a good kisser in high school,” I said. “He taught me how to kiss. When we were making out, he seemed really into it.”

  “Oh, kissing, who isn’t into kissing? Men, women. Gays, straights. Everyone likes to kiss. But when he kissed you, maybe he was imagining me.”

  That would make two of us, I thought. The whole time I was kissing Jordan, I was imagining you, Elliot. Of course, I didn’t say that out loud. I just said, “It would be fun to see them again. Go ahead. Set it up. Roberta and Jordan. You and me. You’re right. A mini Chicago reunion.”

  “Welcome to Une Nork, Mom,” Evan said when he met my plane, and we laughed at the old joke. We went to several plays and my handsome son showed me his favorite haunts—bars and restaurants and galleries in the city. I got to know Evan as a grown-up and it was wonderful.

  I met you for lunch. You’d made a reservation at the Russian Tea Room, a place whose opulence intoxicated me before I had a single drink. We talked about your book. You had a title you favored, something like Acts of Ascendance. I had no idea what that meant and you spent a very long time explaining it, trying to convince me how the title worked. I kept sipping wine and tried to pay attention. You were wearing a linen shirt, a pale, natural color, and the more I drank, the more I wanted to touch your arm, to stroke the finely woven material, which practically shimmered under the chandelier above us. I’d never seen a shirt like that—it made you look as if you were from another place and century. You belonged in that elegant tearoom, yet looked like no one else in the restaurant.

  You glanced around the room. The lunch crowd had emptied out and we still had several hours until it was time to meet Roberta and Jordan. “I guess we should go,” you said and reached for your wallet. “God, the time flew by, but there’s still so much to talk about,” and you smiled at me. “It was great seeing you. It’s always great to see you.” You leaned over and gave me a small kiss on the cheek.

  “Why don’t you come to my hotel?” I suggested, shocking myself when I heard the words tumbling from my mouth. I’d clearly had too much to drink and too many hours sitting close to you in the red velvet booth. “We haven’t gotten through the last pages of the manuscript,” I said. “Let’s get through that chapter, at least.” I emptied the last of the wine from my glass and turned brightly to you.

  Let it be stated here, for the record, that I have never had sex with a married, or even sort-of-married man, other than you, Elliot Pine. I have consistently advised friends, coworkers, and relatives as to the lack of wisdom of having sex with a married man. I do not think that having sex with a married, or even sort-of-married man, is a good idea for either sexual partner. Yet, on that afternoon, there I was suggesting that we go back to my small hotel room on West Eighty-Seventh, knowing that under my sedate blue dress I was wearing a new lace bra that lifted the sag of gravity and three children from my breasts. I wanted you and I could think of little else. I wanted to watch you unbutton that fine linen shirt and then feel your naked body against mine. I cannot say what I thought would happen after we slept together, but I am sure it involved some variation of you realizing the inadequacy of your relationship with Lilly, followed by the suggestion that I move to Beacon, New York, or you to Oakland, California, and we stop wasting the remainder of our days on separate coasts, away from one another.

  In the booth of the Russian Tea Room, after I spoke and smiled up at you brightly, you stared at me a long time. You looked at me the way I have many times looked when a waiter has offered dessert. The look which says, “I know I shouldn’t. I’ve already eaten quite enough, thank you, but, still, that flourless chocolate cake sounds too entirely delicious to refuse.”

  You grabbed the check and threw quite a lot of cash onto the table. You’d obviously considered the offer of dessert and decided you could not pass it up. You rose, walked quickly around the table, and slid me out of the booth, pulling me to my feet as if I might change my mind. Then you took my hand and led me out of the restaurant, flagging down a cab and telling the driver the address of my hotel on West Eighty-Seventh.

  So glad, I thought. So glad that under this nice navy wool dress, I wore black lacy underpants and bought the kind of bra I hadn’t worn in many years. This was a bra that would satisfy any man’s desires, my breasts a full, rich feast for the eyes. We weren’t young, you and I, but my theory is that once you’ve had sex with a man, the possibility and the desire are always there. You remember that person as how they were when they were young. After the first shock, the added years and pounds and wrinkles disappear, and you see only the woman or man of your memory. At least, I hoped that was true. I knew it was true for me of you. You still looked glorious, still resembling the El Greco painting of Fray Paravicino I’d seen so many years before hanging in a museum in Boston. Now the good Fray was in middle age, a few gray hairs interspersed with the dark. Yet you, Elliot, like the man in the painting, still had the full lips of a poet. I longed to kiss those lips. That had not changed.

  “Oh, Judith,” you said, your voice husky as you undressed me, “I want always to have you in my life. Even when we’re in an old people’s home, I’ll crawl to see you.”

  Crawl to see me. Elliot, I cherished those words. For years to come, I took them out and heard them again and again. You’ll see, I never forgot them.

  That afternoon, our lovemaking was just right. So many things could have gone wrong. Maybe, you’re saying, my standards were low. Wasn’t I filled with loneliness, frightened of facing an empty nest as Joey was nearly off to college? No, that afternoon in Manhattan was different from our time in San Francisco, different from any other time we’d been together. And it was not just a result of my loneliness. Certainly in our fifties, we were not crazed as we’d been in our thirties. You were slow and generous. I saw that the years had served you well as a lover. You listened to my body and sensed my every reaction. Some of my girlfriends, Rachel in particular, had begun to say that in their fifties they were losing interest in sex. Rachel, the once-fiery hot redhead, said she was now perfectly happy, relieved even, that her husband didn’t chase after her as he used to. Not me. I was still desperately interested in the physical; I still craved touch and passion. It was what made me feel most alive. But then, for my whole life, not just that day, I had craved your touch in particular.

  That afternoon was perfect. “Whoa,” I teasingly asked you, “did you have some Viagra with lunch at the Russian Tea Room? A little blue pill you swallowed with your borscht?”

  “No pill,” you replied.
“That black bra you’re wearing is quite enough of a stimulant.”

  I remembered back to all the times we’d pressed our bodies together, in the woods in Wisconsin, the hours on your narrow bed in the apartment where your mother died, the steamy cars parked near Lake Michigan, and then, that year of hotel rooms on Union Square. I softly touched the line of soft, dark hair snaking down your belly and now, as always, it drove me crazy. I leaned down to kiss your belly. Perhaps it was not as tight as it had once been, but you still remained a lean man.

  Actually, it never mattered whether you and I actually had intercourse; everything we ever did was foreplay. Your touch, eyes, the fact that those eyes were so close to mine, made me happy. I loved the creases that were now at the corners of your eyes. I also had crow’s-feet and I was glad that we were the same age, both battle-scarred by life and death. I let you touch the cesarean scar from Joseph’s birth. I ran my hands over your feet, no longer soft and narrow, but calloused and knobby. When we were kids and had lain together in your room, rubbing up and down against each other’s bodies, it had been consoling sex. After years of frustration, we’d finally had those crazy, wild San Francisco weekends. We were daring and athletic. We can do this. We can try that. After all the teenaged restraint, we were finally adults; we could do what we wanted. It was like the first time some kids can drink booze legally. On the night of their twenty-first birthday, they might go out and binge, showing no restraint. Now, in our fifties, it was different. Everything was slow and intentional. I don’t mean to say it wasn’t exciting. That afternoon was take-your-breath-away sex for both of us. We were left moaning and shaking. Afterward, I wrapped myself around you from behind, then slowly stroked your back, feeling the rivulets of sweat. We belonged together, I thought. This was what it was like when you’d loved someone all of your life and he was your other half.