Mankind & Other Stories of Women

by Marianne Ackerman

  Another fact slipped out during the course of our fateful family dinner in Montreal, a detail that may also have a part to play. Actually, Wanda told us about it. Around the time Hart made his spooky confession and drove the entire Bill story deeper into my prepubescent subconscious, Neil was drafted from his college hockey team and signed up with the Boston Bruins. He played one season as forward and scored a couple of goals before suffering a knee injury that took him off the ice forever. He walks with a bit of a limp, but he’s got the photos and his Bruins hockey sweater.

  Neil says a half-season in the NHL hardly constitutes a brilliant athletic career, but I think he’s too modest. When Wanda mentioned he played Number 10 for Boston, I shrieked: “Amazing!” Clapped my hands, covered my mouth and laughed until tears rolled down my cheeks. I was just so incredibly proud of him, yet somehow, not at all surprised. Neil/Bill as a professional hockey player seemed totally plausible. Inevitable. Of course, the life my mysterious brother “Bill” lived outside our house would have to be rich and meaningful. And there he was in person, a warm, cheerful, normal human being prepared to love us all.

  Under other circumstances, Hart might have taken this information in stride. But immediately after the exchange about hockey, he left the restaurant. For weeks afterwards he wouldn’t return my calls, and when I finally caught him in, he had nothing to say.

  A few months after the party, Sandrine phoned to tell me he’d left Montreal, gone off to LA to write a screenplay. He’d been threatening to do this for years, but I never thought he actually would. Sandrine had only a vague idea of what had happened that night. She didn’t seem to take much interest when I tried to explain. In fact, thinking about it now, I realise she wasn’t at all disappointed to have her ex-husband living south of the border, out of sight and earshot.

  I guess I should be grateful for the shadow Hart cast on my childhood. Although it was not his intention, his fabrication set me on a path, opened me to the thrill of an unpredictable, unfathomable, unfinished story, gave me my life’s work.

  I haven’t given up on my middle brother. I remain open. As I said, I love him. But there comes a point when a man’s demons are his own business. So instead of worrying where he is or why he hasn’t called, I am content to wait for news. To imagine he is thirteen again and living much the way Bill lived during those early, formative years, estranged from his true family. Now it’s Hart who’s out there somewhere in a misty field, eyeballing the emptiness.

  LENA

  LENA AURBACH naturally slight, with fine features and thin blond hair that hung like parted drapes. She was sensitive to the sun and applied layers of sunscreen to keep it away. She even rubbed it on her dog Gustav’s nose, although after a week on the Pacific coast he still thought of the cream as food and licked it off when her back was turned.

  Berliners by birth, they were midway through an ambitious circle tour of the USA when Hart found them sitting on a bench by the ocean, gazing at the sunset. He couldn’t say what caught his eye first, Lena’s delicate beauty or Gustav, the way he thumped his feathery tail impatiently, as if it was he who held her on a leash and not the other way around.

  The sight of Lena’s white cane leaning against her backpack drew him to a stop. A talisman of vulnerability, it made him want to say point-blank: go home, Venice Beach is no place for a blind girl. Instead he opened the conversation with a gentle word to Gustav, and thirty minutes later she was sitting on his back porch sipping Campari while he fired up the barbecue.

  Of all the places they’d visited so far, California most closely resembled the America inside her head. It smells white, she said, like an overexposed photograph, sea salt and fast cars. A hectic dream, it’s crazy, meaning wonderful.

  Hart intended to warn her against talking to strangers. She saw it coming. “I don’t usually go off with people I don’t know,” she said, to assure him. “But Gustav likes you. Anyway, this is a special day, nothing bad can happen.”

  The day was September 10, 2001, almost twelve years since the Berlin Wall came down, twenty-four since she was born. She had lived half her life on either side of a great divide, both symbolic and concrete. A dramatic soul prone to superstition, Lena was on the lookout for meaning in odd places. She was determined this day would be memorable. She had built their trip around it. She kept the lie of blindness simple. The white cane was a prop; Gustav, the perfect straight man.

  Her acting teacher claimed the key was to refine peripheral vision. Never look a person in the eye. Maintain a vacant stare and watch the edges. She had taken theatre classes to relieve the boredom of training as a nurse (her parents’ idea). Lacking natural sympathy for those weakened by illness, she preferred to meet people on their feet. The act of blindness was a game that let her see what was normally kept hidden.

  As Hart tossed plates and cutlery on the table and uncorked a bottle of Napa Valley sauvignon, Gustav followed his every move. Lena watched too, when Hart’s back was turned. He reminded her of her father. The beginning of a belly rolled out over his blue jeans but he had solid shoulders and thick arms. She saw him start to light a candle, then think better of it. Instead, he left the porch light on. It lit them up like a stage. For moments like this, she kept her lips pursed in a faint silly smile, so that if the urge to laugh took over, it wouldn’t seem unusual.

  Hart’s questions were tactful. He didn’t come right out and say, how does a blind girl find her way around a foreign country? Or, when did you go blind? His admiration was obvious. She told him she had friends and contacts in every city they were visiting, people who could show her around, and Gustav was a brilliant guide. He would remember the way back to the youth hostel, only a few blocks away. He was capable of inflicting serious bodily harm should trouble arise.

  She was wearing a short skirt. Bare legs crossed, she dangled a sandal on the toes of one foot. Hart took long appreciative looks at her legs but there wasn’t a hint of flirtation in his voice.

  “Would you like me to cut it for you?” he said, setting a plate in front of her. “I mean your steak?”

  “Please.”

  He’d grilled one for Gustav too, who growled as Hart approached Lena’s side to cut the meat into bite-sized pieces. She reached down and petted the dog’s mane, then felt for a fork and began the delicate, act of eating blind.

  From across the leafy patio garden, a woman stood behind a lace curtain, observing the candleless dinner. An actress born in Quebec, she had starred in a few blockbusters directed by a famous American, who became her husband for a while. When Hart moved into the house next door, he recognised her immediately, though she’d pretty well given up acting and was writing her memoirs. She had noticed him sitting on the back deck, nodding off in front of his laptop, and struck up a conversation.

  She was glad he wasn’t aloof like the fresh young thing who owned the house, a character actress who pined for stardom but spent most of her time running after Off-OffBroadway plays. He was mature, and, like herself, facing the challenge of a blank screen, a solitary ordeal full of hope and despair. He was willing to swap platitudes over a board fence covered with clematis. Once, they got drunk together and played with fire, but it died out in the daylight. From then on, they had an unspoken agreement not to start anything foolish or that later would require discussion.

  Through binoculars, the actress watched Lena nibble at her salad while Hart studied her movements. Among the vanities that plagued her was a refusal to admit she needed strong glasses. Her doctor had suggested laser correction, but she refused. She kept the computer screen on 16-point font and learned to choose fruit by touch and smell. Often she faked, falling back on the skills of her profession.

  Watching Hart play the attentive host, she predicted he would end up bedding this lovely young woman. The idea cheered her. She imagined them stretched out on silk sheets, bathed in soft light, just like a movie. He was lonely. He pretended to write but was blocked by some unexplained woe. He often played blasts of music at
noon, mood-lifting tunes that made the windows shake.

  She turned away, switched on the television, leaving the sound low so their voices continued to drift in through the open window.

  It was dark by the time Hart and Lena finished eating. He had killed the bottle of wine and, under the porch light’s glare, his head ached. Thinking he would not easily forget the dazzle of Lena even under starlight, he flipped off the switch. She seemed to relax in the darkness. Head resting on her hands, she asked him about Montreal, a city she hoped to visit some day.

  “People claim it’s European,” she said, “which is what they said about New Orleans, but they’re wrong. It’s all totally, unmistakably American.”

  Emboldened by wine, Hart ventured a sensitive question: “How can you experience these places and speak so confidently when . . .”

  “Places have their own unique sounds and smells,” she said. “Like original music, or perfume.”

  Hart closed his eyes to test her theory, but his senses were untrained. All he saw was Lena’s lithe silhouette, glowing in the dark.

  “And I’m not totally blind,” she added, using the word for the first time. “I can see vague shapes. I can’t read signs or recognise people, but light and dark, yes, I see the difference.”

  As they talked, an idea for a movie began to build in his mind, the story of a dog and a blind girl making their way across America. A tragedy, of course; all this beauty and vulnerability could only meet a violent end. The thought sickened him but the concept was compelling: a feminist, youth-oriented road movie exploring the cruelty and kindness of America. From then on his questions concerned things a writer would need to know. Some of Lena’s answers sounded silly, a few downright unlikely, but he pressed on, careful not to jeopardise access to this living source of inspiration, the one ingredient that had been absent from his oasis of solitude. He had come to LA to write Exoneration (working title), a forensic thriller based on a treatment written years earlier during a single clairvoyant night, following the worst week of his divorce from Sandrine. All he needed was time to flesh out the outline.

  Since turning fifty, he’d taken a few bold decisions concerning people and work. On the human front, he resolved to distance himself from certain individuals whose affection had begun to weigh, including his sister Amanda and their mother. He handed his files at HarVin investments over to his partner, Vince Bailey, who’d been burning to run things his way for ages. Hart made no great pronouncements or predictions. He did not sit down to write a screenplay with visions of glory. Nor did he think himself a genius, or even that genius was required. He figured that, by a certain age, any intelligent, creative individual had one producible full-length feature film in him; a serious commitment would shake it out. All he had to do was keep typing.

  The chance to sublet a furnished house in the epicentre of movie land fell into his lap the day after he resolved to leave Montreal. An actor he met at a party knew someone who had a place in Venice, California, a few blocks from the ocean. It was quiet and blissfully sparse. He found the days long and a little too hot for work. A month went by and still he hadn’t gotten around to reading the treatment. Instead, he’d skimmed a few how-to books and racked up a huge bill on the movie channel. He was bored and faintly depressed by the dearth of actual typing. Until Lena poked her ruby toenails into view, the realisation that he would never write Exoneration had stayed on the level of unconscious malaise. As they talked, he had a powerful feeling that she had come into his life for a purpose. Through her, the future would present itself. He was grateful, and resolved to give her a percentage of the spoils.

  At ten o’clock the actress got tired of watching them and went to bed. As soon as she closed her eyes, fatigue disappeared. She pondered her fellow Quebecer’s dedication to the art of conversation, while other more delicious modes of communication waited a few steps behind the door. She hadn’t noticed Lena’s white cane. She figured she knew young women well enough to know you don’t spend an evening with a charbroiled slab of prime rib unless the man’s demeanour is tempting. The girl’s reticence led her to doubt her own judgement. To wonder whether Hart was or wasn’t an attractive man. By industry standards, he wasn’t star material. But he could hold up his end of a conversation; he seemed to take a genuine interest in women.

  Throwing back the covers, she picked up the binoculars for another look. The porch light was out, their voices bubbled through the night. Reaching for the bedside phone, she dialled his number, let it ring three times, and hung up. This should bring chatter to a close, she thought, and climbed back into bed.

  When Hart went inside to answer the phone, Lena took advantage of his absence to stand up and smooth the wrinkles from her skirt. The bites of steak she’d eaten sat heavy in her belly. She shovelled the rest to Gustav, who ate like a wolf and began tugging on his leash. The day was almost over. An important day, yet it had left no significant traces. She thought of her parents, doting professionals determined their precious only child should find a place in the fast-moving world of unified Germany. They hadn’t understood her decision to travel. Their graduation present was a substantial sum of money, which they expected she’d use to buy an apartment of her own. Blowing it all on a trip around America was not their idea of a good investment. And travelling alone? Not alone, she had protested, Gustav is a clever beast, impossible to dupe.

  Without the mask of blindness, Lena was shy, which, coupled with youth and beauty, meant she was more often stared at than drawn into conversation. For long stretches of the journey she had been lonely and bored. Time loomed like an endless sidewalk between a few memorable encounters; hours had to be filled. Two or three bad days running and she’d begun to think, as all young spirits do in times of disappointment, that maybe her parents were right. Homesickness had settled in like a sudden change in weather. Meeting Hart had been a welcome respite. She was glad of conversation, but it was running out when the phone rang.

  “Be patient,” she whispered to Gustav. “When the stranger returns, we’ll say goodnight and go.”

  By the time Hart picked up the receiver, the phone had stopped ringing. He listened to the dial tone for a few moments, then checked the message screen. Unknown Caller. That’s what it said when Sandrine phoned from Montreal. He dialled her number. The moment he heard her say hello he knew she hadn’t called him. This was not the voice of a woman sitting by the phone. It was a halfsleepy, almost sexy hello, meaning she was not alone.

  Most of the time, Hart wanted nothing more than to hear his ex-wife had moved on, found a new man, someone ready to soak up all that latent domestic energy, to grab hold of her objections and do the deed itself, reproduce, plunge into family life and leave solitary types like him to fend for themselves on Friday night. He was weary of feeling responsible for Sandrine. Worse, he was fed up with his own addiction to the dance.

  Still, when he heard her sultry hello, imagined her lying naked beside a stranger, he did not rejoice. He knew the music and perfume of that room the way Lena knew New Orleans, as a pure, visceral flood of sensation requiring no pictures. He was in Sandrine’s bedroom; the room was in him: skylight illuminating a wall of exposed brick, hardwood floors, an iron bed, antique bathtub with claw feet scarcely hidden behind a screen of glass brick. It was a room designed for leisurely love and Sunday morning breakfast, because Sandrine was the kind of woman whose designs included a man. He had been there, soaked in the warmth. It irked him that someone else was there now. Jealousy wears many masks. One of them is love. Held dangling by her breath, he knew he had come to LA to get away from Sandrine. He should say it, now. Tell her his call had been a mistake, like every other call.

  This must be the last call.

  Instead, what he said was: “Sandrine!” It came out all wrong, hoarse and pleading. She did not reply and, in the emptiness, a jab of pain started at his shoulder and shot straight down, taking his breath away.

  He wanted to say help but the pain cut right to left, a lightn
ing line as tight as a tendon, swelling, pushing his insides toward some explosive climax. He inhaled, gripped the chair’s arm, exhaled, struggling to ride it out. Any minute now he would have to let go of the phone. He raised his body a few inches off the seat and leaned forward into the pain.

  Finally the colossus broke and he jerked back, gasping for breath. The move was too quick. The swivel chair spun him head over heels. Relieved, he choked and laughed. He said her name once more, this time a roar. He heard the clang of bells, saw his feet fly up in the air as he hit the floor. Then everything went black.

  Lena heard the crash and froze. The America she held in her head was full of cartoon violence but every story ended happily. This was different. It summoned up an East Berliner’s response to calamity: Get out. Keep on walking. You saw nothing. It’s not your business. With the wisdom of a girl raised behind a Wall, she knew that strangers in trouble could rarely be helped. The people who take care of trouble also tap your phone and keep files up to date. To enter that web is to invite contamination by an unknowable virus.

  Gustav agreed. A fearsome volley of barks exposed his alarm. Lena yanked his leash tight to silence him and started for the garden gate. A light next door went out.

  The sudden darkness made her remember the cane. Flight temporarily stayed, she turned to look back. Now it was possible to see through the patio doors into the room where Hart had gone to answer the phone. He was still sitting in the chair, but the chair had fallen over backwards. He was sitting up-ended. She thought of an improv exercise her acting coach had assigned. Two people share a bus seat in that same upended position. They have to pretend everything is normal, carry on conversation through twisted windpipes with their feet in the air. He looked absurd, calves dangling. His face was sunburn red.