Among Other Things, I've Taken Up Smoking

by Aoibheann Sweeney

  “Don’t look so frightened, dear,” she said when she found herself facing me. “We’ll get you covered up. You’re welcome to anything in that bureau drawer over there.”

  Then she turned to her husband, who was still standing by the bathroom door: “I told the photographer we’d set up in the library.”

  “Why don’t we do it in the boat room?” Nate said, watching his mother look into the mirror again to make sure the dress hadn’t smudged her makeup.

  “Lizzie wanted it in the library,” said Mr. Stoddard.

  “You don’t want to get into it with her,” Mrs. Stoddard added, fluffing her hair. “We could have done this whole thing at the golf club. Anyway, we should go down. You’ll just have to see what you can find,” she said to me with a teachery kind of smile as she stood back up. “Okay?”

  Nate walked over to kiss me and I felt his parents watching him with a frank mixture of tolerance and anxiety. “We’ll see you down in the tent, Miranda,” said Mr. Stoddard.

  I stood there in the empty room after they left. The air had been sweetened with Mrs. Stoddard’s makeup, Mr. Stoddard’s soapy shower, the burning smell of the hair dryer. All the closets were flung open, Mrs. Stoddard’s dresses and Mr. Stoddard’s shirts in neat colored rows. I could hear the wedding party collecting downstairs. Outside the musicians were warming up; I looked down toward the tent and saw a few navy umbrellas hurrying into the shelter.

  I opened the drawer Mrs. Stoddard had gestured toward, and looked at the scarves folded in neat squares, piled on top of each other; then I closed it again and walked over to sit at her dresser and look in her mirror. I took my hair out of the tight ponytail I had combed it back into for lack of a better hairdo, and I combed it out with her brush so that it fell loosely over my shoulders. I looked through her lipstick until I found a bright red one and screwed it up until the creamy tip was high out of the shell. When I pressed it to my lips it came out thick and glossy, and I puckered in the mirror like a movie star and blinked my father’s doleful eyes. The orchestra began to strain in the tent below. I smiled at myself and stood to look in the long closet mirror.

  I did a little twirl to watch my skirt flare up and I pranced over to where Mr. Stoddard’s ties hung above a neat row of shoes. I stroked them like a harp and one fell loosely to the floor. By the time I went back down the stairs I was feeling glamorous again, my hair down and my arms strong and graceful, my shoes making a clip-clop on each step.

  Out the window of my bedroom I could see umbrellas funneling in under the tent, now dripping with heavy rain. I stripped off my stockings and put them back into their egg-shaped box. I put the box on the pillow but then changed my mind and put it in the wastepaper basket I’d been staring at the night before, which was decorated with a message written in yachting flags. I slipped off the dress and tucked it back into my knapsack. I found the T-shirt and sweater I had worn on the train and put on my jeans. The music stopped and then started up again. I looked out to see water pouring merrily off one corner of the tent. I wrote Nate a note and put it on his pillow upstairs.

  Dear Nate,

  I’ve decided to take the train home. Thank you for inviting me. I’m sorry I wore the wrong dress.

  Yours, Miranda

  I practically leapt out the front door into the rain. The driveway was packed with cars and flooded all the way back to the bridge. I ran down the grassy bump in the middle, jumping to the side whenever it went under water, until my sneakers were soaked and I ran blindly into the puddles. Soon my jeans were soaked too, cold and heavy as metal against my thighs, but I kept running. A heron started up from the marsh beside me, making a faulty takeoff into the strong wind, and even as it left me behind, still running, clumsy and soaked, I felt myself somewhere up in the air with it, my powerful shoulders aching, the rain and bright marsh below me.

  27

  The trains were running behind because of the storm, and I had to wait a couple of hours in the station. It was neat and sterile, and there was no place to buy anything hot to drink. I did my best to warm myself under the hand dryer in the women’s room. I watched for Nate at the door to the station as darkness descended, and began to count the minutes: I knew I had done something that I could not take back. For one giddy moment, it had seemed like a choice—like freedom—and then it was merely the way things were, running in the soaking rain.

  I was the only one getting on the train when it came. The lights in the carriage were dim, but it was warm, and most of the passengers were reading cozily, talking in murmurs. I went straight to the dining car and bought two cups of coffee. I drank them slowly, one cup after another, and after a while I felt my mind speed forward with the momentum of the train. I watched as the backs of houses ticked by, one sleepy life after another, the lit-up kitchen windows, the bicycles left out in the rain. Nate would have long since discovered I was gone; people would already be drunk and dancing. I tried to imagine him making the best of it, but the thought of his reading my stupid note, alone in his room, made me look with panic at the darkness out the window, praying for the city to reappear.

  I got out Ana’s address and phone number as soon as the train pulled into Grand Central. It never occurred to me to call her; instead, I got into a taxi and passed the paper through the hole in the Plexiglas. He nodded and passed it back. It was still raining, and the city was rushing with cars, only a few people on the sidewalks. Ana’s block was relatively deserted when we got uptown; I rang her bell and after a few minutes I heard a voice crackling in Spanish over the intercom.

  “It’s Miranda,” I said, trying not to sound desperate. “I’m looking for Ana?”

  The intercom was quiet. I checked the address again. What if they hadn’t understood me? What if she was up there and someone else had answered? Would they tell her I was here? I turned and looked out the smudged glass entry door at the street. Two boys biked furiously past, leaning into the rain, their sweatshirt hoods pulled up over their heads. I was debating whether to ring again, deciding I had simply rung the wrong bell, when she appeared at the bottom of the stairs. She smiled when she saw me, shaking her head.

  “Hey,” she said, opening the door with a brief glance back into the lobby. “What are you doing here?”

  “I—I just got back,” I said, trying to sound casual.

  She rolled her eyes, though she looked pleased. “You almost woke everyone up,” she said. “I’m babysitting.”

  “Sorry,” I said.

  “That’s okay,” she said. She looked down at the floor. “I can’t—I mean they’re not going to be back for another couple hours, but—” she smiled, already changing her mind. “I mean we gotta be careful.”

  “Okay,” I said, grinning.

  We stayed separate as we climbed the stairs, our faces blank, too giddy to look at each other. It had come right back the minute she let me inside—that full, pure excitement—that secret feeling, throbbing inside us while the rest of the world stayed quietly oblivious, closed doors, beaten up stairways, and ourselves, full of crazy, glowing light. She put her finger to her lips as she let me into her apartment and went to listen for a minute outside the bedroom where the children slept before she came back to me. We were too shy at first to kiss.

  She went to get beers from the kitchen. The television was on in Spanish, a low murmur which Ana said helped the kids to sleep. We sat down on the couch. We took a few sips of beer.

  She’d gotten in trouble for coming home so late on Thursday. “It’s not like my sister doesn’t do it all the time,” she said, with a flash of resentment, “but I guess I usually—call ahead or whatever.” She glanced shyly down at her beer.

  I smiled, not sure if she was being modest or just blustering. I wasn’t sure if she knew, either—it always seemed as if she was just making her whole self up right in front of me. I couldn’t take my eyes off her: the way she leaned back on the couch like she knew I was watching, flexing her shoulders, and then the next minute picking at her beer lab
el, too shy to talk. I kissed her but I could tell she was nervous with the kids sleeping; “Gun shy,” she said.

  “How’d everybody like the dress?” she finally asked.

  I shrugged. “I didn’t really end up wearing it,” I said.

  “Why not?”

  “They—they wanted me to wear a shawl over it.”

  “Really?” She laughed, looking at me. “Whose wedding was it, anyway?”

  “Well, that guy, Nate—”

  “Your boyfriend?”

  “Yeah—I mean it was his sister’s wedding.” I glanced up apologetically. “He wanted me to wear his mother’s shawl.”

  “Weird,” she said, her amusement waning. “What did you do?”

  “I just left,” I said, taking a casual swig of my beer.

  “Without going to the ceremony or anything?”

  “Well, I left him a note.”

  “A note?” she glanced over toward the bedrooms and then looked back at me in disbelief. “What did you say, sorry I ruined your sister’s wedding?”

  I looked down at the floor, my stomach turning. “I just said sorry I wore the wrong dress,” I said quietly.

  She was quiet. “He must be pretty mad,” she said finally.

  “I guess so.”

  “I would be.” She took a sip of her beer.

  “I know,” I said, my eyes still glued to the carpet. “It wasn’t very nice.”

  “And you’re supposed to be the nice girl,” she said, halfheartedly.

  “I didn’t really want to go in the first place.”

  “Well, maybe you could have told him that earlier,” she said, her voice a little more gentle. “Like when he invited you.”

  “I know,” I said.

  “You’re a little crazy,” she said, smiling at last. “Aren’t you?”

  “I guess so,” I said, even though it hadn’t felt that crazy. “I don’t really understand why weddings matter so much,” I added, sounding petulant. I felt like something was gone between us; she had made me feel bad. Suddenly I wanted to go home. “Maybe I should go,” I said, standing up.

  She stood up too. Somehow we’d both been hurt. We weren’t really looking at each other. “Will you be okay getting home?” she asked.

  “Yeah,” I said. I picked up my knapsack, too miserable to really think, anxious to get out of there. “I’ll see you later,” I said, when she let me out the door. She stood inside; it wasn’t safe to kiss anyway.

  It wasn’t until I’d gotten to the bottom of the stairs and let the door to her building close behind me that I realized I should have asked her how to get a cab. They weren’t exactly filling the streets. I didn’t even know where the subway station was. I turned left and started down the block. The rain had stopped and the sidewalks looked clean under the streetlights; the heavy air had lifted. Inside the apartment buildings televisions flickered blue, the yellow light from the deli awning on the corner looked cozy. A low thudding bass started up behind me, filling the air until the car finally passed, the sound gushing out onto the sidewalk. Ahead of me three boys, wide apart on the sidewalk, walked a thick-necked dog on a leash.

  Two men came out of the deli just as I approached, taking in the new air. They stopped talking to watch me go by. I had planned on stopping in, to ask directions to the subway, but I kept walking. I knew I should stop. I had Ana’s phone number, I remembered, and I could always use a pay phone, ask her where the subway was. But instead I went stubbornly forward. I knew how to take care of myself. I had been fine without Ana; I had been fine without this city. At home I could steer straight through the dark to the cove when my father’s light was out, I could take the dory across in the thickest fog.

  I was walking fast, and had started to catch up to the boys with the dog when they stopped to talk to two young girls idling in a doorway with a small child. I felt them watching me as I hurried past, purposeless. It was a familiar feeling, anyway—being alone. I hadn’t meant to expect more. It had just happened, as if it were a part of growing up, wanting to be with another person. When actually it wasn’t, when actually it only got harder, being with other people—pleasing them, disappointing them.

  I started to cry. It was stupid, I told myself, not knowing where I was going, but I didn’t want to stop. And anyway there was a bigger avenue ahead, dim but rushing with cars; there would be a subway or a taxi there. It was just that I had never felt it before, that someone could be so close, like all you had to do was touch them, and they could see your life around them as if it were real, as if all the things you’d ever thought had made sense.

  My father must have known, I thought, walking along the big avenue now, toward what looked like a bus stop—that I would fail at this, and come home. He must have known that I was like him, and that in the end we were best left alone. I sat on the bench until a bus came, and when I got on the driver told me he was going downtown. It was bright inside, and a man slept on a seat near the back. An empty bottle rolled in and out of the aisle beside him, in pace with our starts and stops, all the way through the city.

  It was late when I got back to the institute, but the kitchen light was on, which usually meant that Walter and Robert were still out. I went straight upstairs and with a kind of dull determination got out my father’s duffel bag and began to pack all my clothes. I sorted out the drawings all over the desk, lilies and daisies and jagged, fussy carnations, stems and leaves and shadowy beginnings. They seemed to me then another expression of my stupid uncertainty. I felt terrible. Exhaustion came over me like a spell. I felt chilled. I took off my clothes and curled up under the blankets. I would leave first thing in the morning, I told myself.

  The phone began to ring down the hall the instant I closed my eyes. In all the weeks I’d been there, I had never answered the phone. I listened to it ring and ring like I was listening to a dream. It stopped and then it began to ring again.

  Finally I got out of bed, and, wrapped in a towel, I made my way down the hall. When I got to Walter and Robert’s door it stopped again. I stood very still. I could hear nothing but the empty house. I suppose I felt then like I had pushed open every door; I couldn’t tell which were real, or where I had already been. Walter and Robert’s door wasn’t locked, and I guess it never had been. I walked into a large living room, which must have been directly over the library. It faced the street, and though the ceilings were lower, it had the same oddly affected grandeur as the rest of the house, with Robert and Walter’s presence a secondary layer, as if, for the twenty-odd years they had lived there since Arthur died, they had been afraid to settle in. The only exception might have been the large television set in the hearth, like the toaster set on top of the stove in the kitchen. Someone had left a pair of shoes in front of it, which were carefully draped with a crumpled pair of gray socks. Robert, I decided.

  Evidence of Walter was everywhere else—in the forgotten piles of books and papers, the ill-suited file cabinet in the corner, the jacket about to fall off the arm of a chair. The old mantel was full of framed photographs, with a few unframed ones of Robert and him propped timidly in front of them. The same photo my father had at home of Arthur and him in front of the institute was there too, in a thick silver frame; there were others of Arthur standing in groups, and one of my father and him standing in front of a large domed building. My father was smiling, his face giving nothing away.

  I didn’t know what I was looking for until I found it: a black and white photograph, in a thin wooden frame, of a young man wearing tight swim shorts. He seemed to be on a kind of outcrop, with sky all around him, an ocean nearby. He had his hands on his hips, his hair wet and slicked back, and he was squinting against the sun.

  The phone began to ring again. I took the photo out from behind the other pictures to look at it more closely. It was my father, fresh from a swim, feeling handsome and young. He was even tanned, or so it seemed, his young skin softened by the gray tones of the photograph. I looked at every inch of him—his narrow, boyish
torso, his small hips, his lean legs, his bare feet. He was not smiling, but it was the happiest I had ever seen him—intensely alive, bare, breathing.

  The phone stopped, and then began to ring again. I went into the bedroom to watch it ring, holding the picture against me, and when it stopped I looked around the room. The bed was unmade. I found myself staring at the comforter, thrown messily over to one side, the pale blue fitted sheet underneath. The sunken pillows were disarranged. Three loose wrinkles shot across the blue surface to a soft depression where the last person had heaved himself up.

  “Aren’t you supposed to be in Connecticut?” said a voice behind me.

  I turned around to find Robert, leaning against the doorway, his jacket slung characteristically over his shoulder.

  “I came back,” I said.

  “I see that.”

  “I’m going home tomorrow,” I said.

  He looked at me curiously. “Did something happen at the wedding?”

  “I just left,” I said, still clutching the photograph, my towel. “It wasn’t very nice.” The phone began to ring again and I didn’t move.

  “I take it you’d rather I didn’t get it?”

  I shook my head.

  He stood there with me, listening to the phone ring a few more times, and then he sighed and came forward into the room to quietly hang his coat in the closet. “Sounds like you could use a drink,” he said, looking at me. “I was just about to have one myself.”

  I followed him, still holding on to everything as he walked back into their living room. He held up a bottle of whiskey, and when I nodded he took two glasses from the cabinet by the television and filled them halfway. I sat in an armchair and he sat on the couch. The whiskey tasted miraculously warm, and I felt so grateful I was ready to tell him everything. But he spoke first.