by Andre Dubus
The office was large, with many women and men at desks, and she learned their names, and presented to them an amiability she assumed upon entering the building. Often she felt that her smiles, and her feigned interest in people’s anecdotes about commuting and complaints about colds, were an implicit and draining part of her job. A decade later she would know that spending time with people and being unable either to speak from her heart or to listen with it was an imperceptible bleeding of her spirit.
Always in the office she felt that she was two people at once. She believed that the one who performed at the desk and chatted with other workers was the woman she would become as she matured, and the one she concealed was a girl destined to atrophy, and become a memory. The woman LuAnn worked for was an intense, voluble blonde who colored her hair and was cynical, humorous, and twice-divorced. When she spoke of money, it was with love, even passion; LuAnn saw money as currency to buy things with and pay bills, not an acquisition to accumulate and compound, and she felt like a lamb among wolves. The woman had a lover, and seemed happy.
LuAnn appreciated the practical function of insurance and bought a small policy on her own life, naming her parents as beneficiaries; she considered it a partial payment of her first child’s tuition. But after nearly a year with the insurance company, on a Saturday afternoon while she was walking in Boston, wearing jeans and boots and a sweatshirt and feeling the sun on her face and hair, she admitted to herself that insurance bored her. Soon she was working for a small publisher. She earned less money but felt she was closer to the light she had sometimes lived in during college, had received from teachers and books and other students and often her own work. Now she was trying to sell literature, the human attempt to make truth palpable and delightful. There was, of course, always talk of money; but here, where only seven people worked and book sales were at best modest, money’s end was much like its end in her own life: to keep things going. She was the publicity director and had neither assistants nor a secretary. She worked with energy and was not bored; still, there were times each day when she watched herself, and listened to herself, and the LuAnn Arceneaux she had known all her life wanted to say aloud: Fuck this; and to laugh.
She had lovers, one at a time; this had been happening since she was seventeen. After each one, when her sorrow passed and she was again resilient, she hoped for the next love; and her unspoken hope, even to herself, was that her next love would be her true and final one. She needed a name for what she was doing with this succession of men, and what she was doing was not clear. They were not affairs. An affair had a concrete parameter: the absence of all but physical love; or one of the lovers was married; or both of them were; or people from different continents met on a plane flying to a city they would never visit again; something hot and sudden like that. What LuAnn was doing was more complicated, and sometimes she called it naked dating: you went out to dinner, bared your soul and body, and in the morning went home to shower and dress for work. But she needed a word whose connotation was serious and deep, so she used the word everyone else used, and called it a relationship. It was not an engagement, or marriage; it was entered without vows or promises, but existed from one day to the next. Some people who were veterans of many relationships stopped using the word, and said things like: I’m seeing Harry, and Bill and I are fucking.
The men saw marriage as something that might happen, but not till they were well into their thirties. One, a tall, blond, curly-haired administrator at the insurance company, spoke of money; he believed a man should not marry until paying bills was no longer a struggle, until he was investing money that would grow and grow, and LuAnn saw money growing like trees, tulips, wild grass and vines. When she loved this man, she deceived herself and believed him. When she no longer loved him, she knew he was lying to her and to himself as well. Money had become a lie to justify his compromise of the tenderness and joy in his soul; these came forth when he was with her. At work he was ambitious and cold, spoke of precedent and the bottom line, and sometimes in the office she had to see him naked in her mind in order to see him at all.
One man she briefly loved, a sound engineer who wrote poems, regarded children as spiteful ingrates, fatherhood as bad for blood pressure, and monogamy as absurd. The other men she loved talked about marriage as a young and untried soldier might talk of war: sometimes they believed they could do it, and survive as well; sometimes they were afraid they could not; but it remained an abstraction that would only become concrete with the call to arms, the sound of drums and horns and marching feet. She knew with each man that the drumroll of pregnancy would terrify him; that even the gentlest—the vegetarian math teacher who would not kill the mice that shared his apartment—would gratefully drive her to an abortion clinic and tenderly hold her hand while she opened her legs. She knew this so deeply in her heart that it was hidden from her; it lay in the dark, along with her knowledge that she would die.
But her flesh knew the truth, and told her that time and love were in her body, not in a man’s brain. In her body a man ejaculated, and the plastic in her uterus allowed him to see time as a line rising into his future, a line his lovemaking would not bend toward the curve of her body, the circle of love and time that was her womb and heart. So she loved from one day to the next, blinded herself to the years ahead, until hope was tired legs climbing a steep hill, until hope could no longer move upward or even stand aching in one flat and solid place. Then words came to her, and she said them to men, with derision, with anger, and with pain so deep that soon she could not say them at all, but only weep and, through the blur of tears, look at her lover’s angry and chastened eyes. The last of her lovers before she met her final one was a carpenter with Greek blood, with dark skin she loved to see and touch; one night while they ate dinner in his kitchen, he called commitment “the c word.” LuAnn was twenty-eight then. She rose from her chair, set down her glass of wine, and contained a scream while she pointed at him and said in a low voice: “You’re not a man. You’re a boy. You all are. You’re all getting milk through the fence. You’re a thief. But you don’t have balls enough to take the cow.”
This was in late winter, and she entered a period of abstinence, which meant that she stopped dating. When men asked her out, she said she needed to be alone for a while, that she was not ready for a relationship. It was not the truth. She wanted love, but she did not want her search for it to begin in someone’s bed. She had been reared by both parents to know that concupiscence was at the center of male attention; she learned it soon enough anyway in the arms of frenzied boys. In high school she also learned that her passion was not engendered by a boy, but was part of her, as her blood and spirit were, and then she knew the words and actions she used to keep boys out of her body were also containing her own fire, so it would not spread through her flesh until its time. Knowing its time was not simple, and that is why she stopped dating after leaving the carpenter sitting at his table, glaring at her, his breath fast, his chest puffed with words that did not come soon enough for LuAnn to hear. She walked home on lighted sidewalks with gray snow banked on their curbs, and she did not cry. For months she went to movies and restaurants with women. On several weekends she drove to her parents’ house, where going to sleep in her room and waking in it made her see clearly the years she had lived in Boston; made her feel that, since her graduation from college, only time and the age of her body had advanced, while she had stood on one plane, repeating the words and actions she regarded as her life.
On a Sunday morning in summer, she put on a pink dress and white high-heeled shoes and, carrying a purse, walked in warm sunlight to the ten o’clock Mass. The church was large and crowded. She did not know this yet, but she would in her thirties: the hot purity of her passion kept her in the Church. When she loved, she loved with her flesh, and to her it was fitting and right, and did not need absolving by a priest. So she had never abandoned the Eucharist; without it, she felt the Mass, and all of the Church, would be only ideas she could g
et at home from books; and because of it, she overlooked what was bureaucratic or picayune about the Church. Abortion was none of these; it was in the air like war. She hoped never to conceive a child she did not want, and she could not imagine giving death to a life in her womb. At the time for Communion she stepped into the line of people going to receive the mystery she had loved since childhood. A woman with gray hair was giving the Hosts; she took a white disk from the chalice, held it before her face, and said: “The Body of Christ.” LuAnn said: “Amen,” and the woman placed it in her palms and LuAnn put it in her mouth and for perhaps six minutes then, walking back to her pew and kneeling, she felt in harmony with the entire and timeless universe. This came to her every Sunday, and never at work; sometimes she could achieve it if she drove out of the city on a sunlit day and walked alone on a trail in woods, or on the shore of a lake.
After Mass she lingered on the church steps till she was alone. Few cars passed, and scattered people walked or jogged on the sidewalk, and a boy on a skateboard clattered by. She descended, sliding her hand down the smooth stone wall. A few paces from the steps, she turned her face up to the sun; then the heel of her left shoe snapped, and her ankle and knee gave way: she gained her balance and raised her foot and removed the broken shoe, then the other one. Her purse in one hand and her shoes in the other, she went to the steps and sat and looked at the heel hanging at an angle from one tiny nail whose mates were bent, silver in the sunlight. A shadow moved over her feet and up her legs and she looked at polished brown loafers and a wooden cane with a shining brass tip, and a man’s legs in jeans, then up at his face: he had a trimmed brown beard and blue eyes and was smiling; his hair was brown and touched the collar of his navy blue shirt. His chest was broad, his waist was thick and bulged over his belt, and his bare arms were large; he said: “I could try to fix it.”
“With what?”
He blushed, and said: “It was just a way of talking to you.”
“I know.”
“Would you like brunch?”
“Will they let me in barefoot?”
“When they see the shoe.”
He held out his hand, and she took it and stood; her brow was the height of his chin. They told each other their names; he was Ted Briggs. They walked, and the concrete was warm under her bare feet. She told him he had a pretty cane, and asked him why.
“Artillery, in the war. A place called Khe Sanh.”
“I know about Khe Sanh.”
He looked at her.
“You do?”
“Yes.”
“Good,” he said.
“Why?”
“You were very young then.”
“So were you.”
“Nineteen.”
“I was twelve.”
“So how do you know about Khe Sanh?”
“I took a couple of courses. It’s the best way to go to war.”
He smiled, and said: “I believe it.”
At a shaded corner they stopped to cross the street and he held her elbow as she stepped down from the curb. She knew he was doing this because of the filth and broken glass, and that he wanted to touch her, and she liked the feel of his hand. She liked the gentle depth of his voice, and his walk; his right knee appeared inflexible, but he walked smoothly. It was his eyes she loved; she could see sorrow in them, something old he had lived with, and something vibrant and solid, too. She felt motion in him, and she wanted to touch it. He was a lawyer; he liked to read and he liked movies and deep-sea fishing. On their left, cars stopped for a red light; he glanced at her, caught her gazing at his profile, and she said: “It was bad, wasn’t it?”
He stopped and looked down at her.
“Yes. I was a corpsman. You know, the nurse, the EMT—” She nodded. “With the Marines. I got hurt in my twelfth month. Ten years later I started dealing with the eleven and a half months before that.”
“How’s it going?”
“Better. My knee won’t bend, but my head is clear in the morning.”
They walked; his hand with the cane was close to her left arm, and she could feel the air between their hands and wrists and forearms and biceps, a space with friction in it, and she veered slightly closer so their skin nearly touched. They reached the street where she lived and turned onto it, facing the sun, and she did not tell him this was her street. On the first block was the restaurant; she had walked or driven past it but had not been inside. He held the door for her and she went into the dark cool air and softened lights, the smells of bacon and liquor. She was on a carpet now, and she could see the shapes of people at tables, and hear low voices; then he moved to her right side, lightly placed his hand on her forearm, and guided her to a booth. They ordered: a Bloody Mary for her and orange juice for him, and cantaloupes and omelettes and Canadian bacon with English muffins. When their drinks came, she lit a cigarette and said: “I drink. I smoke. I eat everything.”
“I go to meetings. I’m in my sixth year without a drink. My second without smoking.” His hand came midway across the table. “But I’d love a hit off yours.”
She gave him the cigarette, her fingers sliding under his. She left her hand there, waited for his fingers again, and got them, his knuckles beneath hers, and she paused for a moment before squeezing the cigarette and withdrawing her hand. She said: “Doesn’t cheating make you miss it more?”
“Oh, I’m always missing something.”
“Drinking?”
“Only being able to. Or thinking I was.”
“Nothing horrible has ever happened to me.”
“I hope nothing does.”
“I suppose if I live long enough something will.”
“If you don’t live long enough, that would be horrible. Are you seeing anyone?”
“No. Are you?”
“No. I’m waiting. I limp. I get frightened suddenly, when there’s no reason to be. I get sad too, when nothing has happened. I know its name now, and—”
“What is its name?”
“It. It’s just it, and I go about my day or even my week sometimes, then it’s gone. The way a fever is there, and then it isn’t. I want a home with love in it, with a woman and children.”
“My God,” she said, and smiled, nearly laughing, her hands moving up from the table. “I don’t think I’ve ever heard those words from the mouth of a man.”
“I love the way you talk with your hands.”
They stayed in the booth until midafternoon; he invited her to a movie that night; they stepped out of the restaurant into the bright heat, and he walked with her to the door of her apartment building, and stood holding her hand. She raised her bare heels and kissed his cheek, the hair of his beard soft on her chin, then went inside. She showered for a long time and washed her hair and, sitting at her mirror, blew it dry She put on a robe and slept for an hour and woke happily. She ate a sandwich and soup, and dressed and put on makeup. He lived near the church, and he walked to her building and they walked to the movie; the sun was very low, and the air was cooling. After the movie he took her hand and held it for the four blocks to her apartment, where, standing on the sidewalk, he put his arms around her, the cane touching her right calf, and they kissed. She heard passing cars, and people talking as they walked by; then for a long time she heard only their lips and tongues, their breath, their moving arms and hands. Then she stepped away and said: “Not yet.”
“That’s good.”
“You keep saying that.”
“I keep meaning it.”
He waited until she was inside both doors, and she turned and waved and he held up his hand till she was on the elevator, and she waved again as the door closed. In her apartment she went to her closet and picked up the white shoe with the broken heel. She did not believe in fate, but she believed in gifts that came; they moved with angels and spirits in the air, were perhaps delivered by them. Her red fingernails were lovely on the white leather; her hands warmed the heel.
In the morning she woke before the clock rad
io started, and made the bed; tonight she would see him. In her joy was fear, too, but it was a good fear of the change coming into her life. It had already come, she knew that; but she would yield slowly to it. She felt her months alone leaving her; she was shedding a condition; it was becoming her past. Outside in the sun, walking to work, she felt she could see the souls of people in their eyes. The office was bright; she could feel air touching her skin, and the warmth of electric lights. With everyone she felt tender and humorous and patient, and happily mad. She worked hard, with good concentration, and felt this, too, molting: this trying to plunder from an empty cave a treasure for her soul. She went to lunch with two women, and ordered a steak and a beer. Her friends were amused; she said she was very hungry, and kept her silence.
What she had now was too precious and flammable to share with anyone. She knew that some night with Ted it would burst and blaze, and it would rise in her again and again, would course in her blood, burn in her face, shine in her eyes. And this time love was taking her into pain, yes, quarrels and loneliness and boiling rage; but this time there was no time, and love was taking her as far as she would go, as long as she would live, taking her strongly and bravely with this Ted Briggs, holding his pretty cane; this man who was frightened by what had happened to him, but not by the madness she knew he was feeling now. She was hungry, and she talked with her friends and waited for her steak, and for all that was coming to her: from her body, from the earth, from radiant angels poised in the air she breathed.
Woman on a Plane
FOR MARIE
SHE WAS IN HER THIRTIES, A POET, AND SHE was afraid to fly. Her brother was dying in another city She did not have a husband or children, but she had a job that held her in the city where she lived. Until her brother went home to die, her job was work she gave her time to. But now it was taking time from her. She could feel it.