Among Other Things, I've Taken Up Smoking

by Aoibheann Sweeney

  I nodded, thinking of how often people in Yvesport used to ask me the same question. They always wanted to know exactly when we had become relevant to them, as if they could dismiss any experience beyond the town line. “I was actually born in New York,” I said. “But my father took me to Maine when I was two. People used to remind me of it all the time in Yvesport, but now that I’m here, of course, it doesn’t matter at all.”

  She nodded, as if she had understood what I had been thinking. It was difficult to imagine anyone really feeling like they belonged here, anyway; looking out at the street, at the taxis and the trucks, the shoppers and bystanders, and the workers drilling holes into the pavement, it seemed clear to me that everybody was from somewhere else. “Do you miss it?” I asked her.

  “The Dominican Republic? Not really. I’ve been back a few times. My father still lives there.” She was quiet for a minute. “Did your father stay in Maine?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “I’m just visiting.”

  “You miss it?”

  “Not really,” I said, smiling. “I’ve only been here about a month, though,” I added, to be fair.

  “You seem to make friends pretty quick,” she said, as she pulled off the highway onto the exit ramp.

  We parked across from open garage doors, and I could see the empty carts inside, some already parked haphazardly for the night, some being hosed down by the men who’d been working in them all day. People were milling around outside; a few men stood and watched the activity as if they owned it. I heard Ana unhooking the cart and as soon as I saw her tugging it toward the entrance I got out to help her.

  Though none of the men seemed to notice Ana when she was moving the cart alone, they all noticed me, and one or two even straightened up to have a long stare. A few of them were speaking in another language, but the ones staring at me didn’t say a word. I knew she would have preferred that I stay in the van, but the cart was heavy and awkward and I could tell she was struggling. We rolled it in next to a huge Dumpster, overflowing with uneaten donuts and bagels. A few men were shoving their carts around to get space next to a wall hung with hoses; a dark puddle of coffee had pooled over the drain and covered most of the garage floor. Ana unloaded her tanks and dumped them into the puddle. I knew if I asked what to do she would send me back to the van, so I walked over to the hoses to wait for the one nearest to her cart to come free. The man using it scowled at me, and when he was done he dropped it into the puddle and walked away.

  I braced myself and leaned over to retrieve it out of the warm brown water, holding it away from my dress to bring it over to her.

  “Hey Ana!” one of the men called from across the garage. “How about your friend help me?”

  When she turned and saw me carrying the dripping hose I smiled at her apologetically. She smiled back, but there was a wary look in her eyes, as if she was used to this kind of teasing, and I felt a rush of protectiveness toward her. “You better wait in the car,” she said.

  I watched from the passenger seat as she cleaned the rest of the cart and dragged it into a parking space. I was used to walking onto a dock full of men, but then I suppose I’d always more or less had Mr. Blackwell on my side. I watched her move between them to wash her hands, her shoulders hunched, making herself invisible. One of them said something to her, and they seemed to be joking for a minute; she called goodbye cheerfully as she turned to come back out to the van.

  She looked relieved when she got back inside, and neither of us spoke until we were clear of the garage. She offered me a cigarette and the ritual with the lighter restored our confidence. She turned on the radio. “Bachata,” she said, grinning at me, moving her head to catch three beats she must have known were coming.

  I laughed.

  “Next stop, café con leche,” she said, thrumming on the steering wheel as we came out on the avenue.

  The restaurant we went to wasn’t far from the garage. It had a yellow awning painted with the words RESTAURANT CARIBE and underneath, POLLO, CARNE, PESCADO. We got a parking space right nearby and she pulled the door open for me with a hint of pride. It was a tiny little place, with just space enough to walk between the stools at the counter and the back wall. The smell of garlic and meat hung in the air, and somewhere in the back was the slow clamor of dishes being washed. It was mid-afternoon, just before the dinner hour, and there were only a few seated customers. Ana greeted one of the women behind the counter as we sat down, and she came over to give Ana a kiss. When her pretty smile faded I thought she looked beautiful. She had wide, intelligent eyes, accentuated by the way she had smoothed her long kinky hair back into a ponytail. I felt her giving me a second look before she went off to make our coffee.

  “Maria’s always trying to get me to give up the cart and work here,” Ana said as she walked away. “I like having my own thing, though. And the rent’s crazy,” she added, as if she was still trying to persuade herself.

  “It’s nice,” I said, looking around and realizing it was true. Though it was small, every inch of the space had been put to efficient use. Maria and the other woman had just enough room to move past the hot trays of food and neatly stacked containers, the coffee machines and juice strainers, but it was clean and busy and bright. “I should work here.”

  She looked at me with surprise. “You looking for a job?”

  “Well, no,” I said, embarrassed. “I work—in the library of the place where I live. But it’s just—sort of isolated.” Suddenly I wished I hadn’t brought it up. What sort of complaint was that? I thought of her heavy cart, the filthy garage. I thought of those boys in their blazers, quieting as I went past.

  “I would never be able to do my job if I didn’t talk to so many different people,” she said. “I know those guys are assholes, but I don’t have to really deal with them. And mostly they’re pretty cool with me.” She shifted huskily in her chair, as if she was still toughing out that moment. “I mean you can live here and never learn to speak English, or you can just do your own thing.” She gave me a brave smile, and suddenly it occurred to me that she was lonely too.

  “I think I’m going to be in big trouble if you don’t like this,” Maria said, setting two frothy cups down in front of us. “But so will you, I think,” she added, with a teasing glance at me, “so I’m not that worried.”

  I took a sip, pretending not to notice Ana’s blush. One minute she was all bravado and the next she was blushing. The coffee was delicious, the milk steamed just enough to bring out the taste without getting airy, and the coffee underneath strong and rich.

  Maria smiled. “I think she likes it,” she said to Ana in English, before she turned away again to take care of a new customer.

  “She’s from Santo Domingo too,” Ana said. “But she didn’t come here until she was twenty. She was married.”

  I nodded, not sure why that surprised me.

  “Did you say your parents were divorced?”

  “No,” I said. “My mother died when I was three. I don’t think she was very happy,” I added, without really thinking about it.

  “How do you know?” Ana said.

  “I don’t, really,” I said, still idly watching Maria, who was reaching for the phone with one hand and lifting a precariously stacked plate off the counter with the other. “I don’t know anything about her, actually. But I think I would remember her better if she had been happier. You know? And she looks kind of sad in the pictures.”

  Ana looked at me. “How old was she when she died?”

  I shrugged. “She was married to my father for only a few years.”

  “Was she pregnant when she married him?”

  I blinked. “I guess so,” I said, suddenly realizing what the coat in the wedding picture was for.

  “Maybe she never wanted to get married or—whatever—have a kid. A lot of people feel like they don’t have a choice, and then they kind of hate it. I mean, not that she hated you, or your dad, or whatever. But I mean—it’s a reason to be sad, if she w
as. My sister got pregnant a few years ago and of course the guy left her, but the truth is she never wanted a kid. She was more bitchy than sad and now of course she has another, but that’s another story. Women have to do what other people want all the time.

  “Maria’s husband was an asshole and she had to leave her kid with his family when she came here,” she said, nodding at Maria, who was making another customer laugh. “But now she’s—I mean she has a whole life.”

  I looked at Maria, who looked every bit like she had a whole life. “People gave her a hard time for leaving her kid behind,” Ana was saying, “but I feel like it’s kind of—I don’t know—brave. Not that your mother left you behind,” she said, turning to me. “I mean, it’s just that some women don’t really feel like they have a choice, I guess.” She took a sip of her coffee, embarrassed.

  In fact my mother had left me behind, I wanted to tell her, but I couldn’t think what made me so sure. Maybe it was just that I had learned to drive through the fog when I was twelve; maybe it was just that I never really blamed her, anyway.

  We were quiet for a minute, feeling the restaurant moving around us. “How did you meet Maria?” I asked, taking another forkful of cake.

  “At a—sort of dance club. It’s in Queens.” She smiled. “Maybe I’ll take you sometime.”

  “Okay,” I said, looking down at my empty cup.

  Maria passed by and asked Ana if we wanted another.

  “Gracias—I should probably—take her home,” Ana said, looking at me inquiringly.

  I shrugged, smiling helplessly.

  “Or not?” She smiled back at me. “I’ll have another if you want one,” she said.

  “You stay right there,” said Maria with a big grin, taking our cups and leaving us in an embarrassed silence.

  The strange thing was how happy I felt, just being quiet—even being embarrassed. It was a warm, secret kind of feeling, not at all the way I felt with Nate, like we were proving something. We were still smiling stupidly when we finally said goodbye to Maria. We didn’t say a word to each other as we got into the van. I watched the streets, full of strangers, as she drove me home. It was late afternoon, and I knew classes would be over and Walter and Robert and Nate would all have dispersed from the institute for the evening. She pulled over across the street and we sat there again.

  “So I’ll see you soon?” she said finally.

  “Yeah,” I said, blushing, suddenly realizing what I was waiting for. I turned in a panic and opened the door.

  “Hey,” she said gently.

  I turned back and she was just sitting there behind the wheel, looking at me with amusement, the way she had that first day, from the window of her cart. Before I knew it I leaned across to kiss her. Her mouth was so soft that I could feel my own mouth too, perfectly soft. I felt my whole body flush as I drew back.

  “See you soon,” I said, blind with embarrassment and excitement, my feet somehow landing on the pavement. I closed the door and ran straight across the street without looking back.

  22

  Walter was in the kitchen when I opened the door. I went giddily down the hall and found him gazing at a table loaded with plastic bags, and the doors of all the cabinets flung open. “I’m cooking dinner,” he announced, taking a sip from a glass of wine.

  I peered into one of the bags, relieved to have something to focus on. “What are you making?”

  “Moroccan Fish Tagine,” he said doubtfully. “From a recipe in the Times this morning.”

  “Do you need some help?” I asked, still trying to calm down. It was like trying to keep a pile of paper inside the dory on the trip across the bay. One minute it was in the boat and the next it was exploding into the air.

  “Of course I do, dear. Did you think I was going to do this alone? I’ve been praying you would come through that door all evening.”

  “Do you have the recipe?” I asked, imagining myself circling back in the boat, the paper floating in the waves.

  He lifted up various bags and patted his pockets in a little panic to find the recipe, already the worse for wear, folded several ways, and handed it to me. “I had to go to Brooklyn to get the ingredients,” he said, watching as I looked it over.

  “It doesn’t look hard,” I said, “as long as you’re good at chopping.”

  “I’m terrific at chopping, as far as I can remember,” he said.

  He poured me a glass of wine and I set him up with a knife and a pile of vegetables at the kitchen table; I unwrapped the fish, which needed to be filleted, and felt myself zeroing in on the task.

  “It’s our anniversary tonight,” he said, as he started in on the onions. “I doubt Robert will remember, but we usually go out, so I’m trying to surprise him.”

  “When’s he supposed to get home?”

  “I don’t know, probably midnight, but I’m hoping that if he remembers, and he’s planning on dinner, he’ll be back at a reasonable hour.”

  I laughed. “How long have you been together?”

  “As long as you’ve been alive, I think. Maybe longer. Arthur introduced us, at one of the parties he and your father threw—I know your father was there because at the end of the night when we were all too drunk to move he sang one of those Irish ballads of his, and totally stole the show.” He sniffed, wiping his nose with his chopping hand. “So it was probably before you were born. Anyway, I was sure Robert had fallen for him already. In fact I’m sure everybody there had fallen for him,” he said, putting the knife down to wipe the tears from his face. “He was a very beautiful man, your father. As evidenced by his daughter,” he added, picking up his wineglass and taking a sip. “Not that he’s not still beautiful—I’m sure he looks better than the two of us, rotting away here for twenty years.”

  I moved the knife under the clean white bones of the sole. I could feel the information he was giving me sucking at me like an undertow, my feet sinking further into the sand. Irish ballads. “Robert said you used to have parties,” I said, trying to hold on.

  “Arthur and your father did, yes, before Arthur got sick. I was still in graduate school. Robert was sort of a man about town in those days, or at least he thought he was—anyway, I’m sure he knew about those kinds of parties all over town. I thought I’d never seen anything so glamorous.”

  “I can’t really imagine my father singing,” I managed, pretending to concentrate on getting the relatively dull knife through the fish.

  “He had to have a few drinks in him, of course,” Walter said, wiping his nose. “But he has a beautiful voice. Didn’t he sing to you when you were young? I bet he did and you can’t remember it.”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “It was the kind of singing,” Walter continued, “which makes you think you heard it when you were a baby. Like a lullaby.”

  Just then my knife slipped; I didn’t cut myself, but I felt a surge of frustration so strong that tears sprang to my eyes. “This knife is too dull,” I said. “Didn’t they ask you how you wanted them filleted at the store?”

  “I thought they were fresher if you bought them like that,” said Walter, startled at my tone.

  I sniffed and turned to open a few drawers. “I bet there’s a sharper knife somewhere,” I said with my back to him, trying to calm down, but I was only crying more. I needed Mr. Blackwell, or someone anyway. When had everything gotten so confusing? I pulled at the drawers, looking in them, though I had cleaned them and reorganized them myself and knew there was no sharper knife. I ought to go over to Nate’s, I told myself. I hadn’t been there in two nights, and I hadn’t told him when I’d be back.

  “How many of these do you think I should cut?” said Walter, pushing his knife at a glistening pile of onions.

  “Oh! That’s more than enough,” I said, laughing now, tears sliding down my face at last. Walter’s eyes, too, were streaming with tears. “Onions!” I said, with another little laugh.

  “Maybe you can have this knife,” he said.

&n
bsp; We traded knives and I felt myself begin to calm down. There was nothing so terrible about my father being able to sing. Mr. Blackwell used to sing, I suddenly remembered. Maybe that had made my father shy. “We had a friend who used to help us cook sometimes,” I said. “He would have had these fish filleted in two minutes.”

  “I was wondering how your father could have been alone all those years,” Walter said amiably, and I felt the fact of Mr. Blackwell floating up like smoke to the ceiling. “Should I peel the potatoes?” he asked.

  “I’ll do them,” I said, turning back to my task. “This knife is much better.”

  “So has Nathaniel invited you to his sister’s wedding yet?” he asked, settling into his wine.

  “No,” I said, looking back at him with surprise.

  “Robert said he was going to. It’ll be in some fabulous mansion in Connecticut, I hear. You’ll have to give us all the details.”

  “Maybe he’s not going to invite me,” I said.

  “I very much doubt that my dear. He’s probably waiting for the right moment. Are you going over there tonight?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “I haven’t seen him in a few days.” I was watching my knife move under the potato skin as I began to peel: Mr. Blackwell always peeled them in one long strip. Throw it over your shoulder, he used to say, and it’ll land in the initials of the man you marry.

  “All the more reason then,” Walter said, smiling. “He called twice for you today.”

  I helped him clear the table once we put the vegetables and the fish in a pot together to bake, and we got out a set of candles and candleholders to make it look fancier. Obviously he was counting on my leaving them to have dinner alone. I almost asked if he wouldn’t mind my simply hiding in my room. But it was their anniversary after all, and they wanted the place to themselves.

  “Do you want me to stay until he comes home?” I asked hopefully.

  “No, no, dear. You go. Lord knows he might never show up.”

  I had a queer emptiness in me when I finally left and walked over to Nate’s. The wine I’d drunk gave it a dizzy edge. I breathed in the cool night air, glad at least to be out of the house; the streets were becoming familiar. Ana’s kiss seemed as if it had happened years before, in some other part of my life, and I walked faster, as if somehow I could keep ahead of it.