The Collected Stories of Deborah Eisenberg

by Deborah Eisenberg

  And then, after a while, when I was laughing and talking, all at once he stood up. “I’m sorry to have to leave you like this,” he said, “but I promised Mark I’d help him with something.” And I saw that Mark and a girl were standing at the bar, looking at us. “Ready,” Chris called over to them. “Honey,” he said, and a waitress materialized next to him. “Get this lady something to drink and put it on my tab. Thanks,” he said. And then he walked out, with Mark and the girl.

  But the strange thing was that I don’t think Mark had actually been waiting for Chris. I don’t think Chris had promised Mark anything. I think Mark and the girl had only been looking at us to look, because I could see that they were surprised when Chris called over to them, and also the three of them stood talking on the sidewalk before they went on together. And right then was when I thought for a minute that Maureen had been wrong about me and Chris. It was not when Chris held my wrist, and not when Chris understood how upset I was, and not when Chris dried off my tears, but it was when Chris left, that I thought Maureen was wrong.

  My grades were getting a lot worse, and my father decided to help me with my homework every night after dinner. “All right,” he would say, standing behind my chair and leaning over me. “Think. If you want to make an equation out of this question, how do you have to start? We’ve talked about how to do this, Laurel.” But I hated his standing behind me like that so much all I could do was try to send out rays from my back that would make him stand farther away. Too bad I wasn’t Maureen. She would have loved it.

  For me, every day pointed forward or backward to the last Thursday of each month, but those Thursdays came and went without anything really changing, either at the doctor’s or at Jake’s, until finally in the spring. Everyone else in my class had spent most of a whole year getting excited or upset about classes and parties and exams and sports, but all those things were one thing to me—a nasty fog that was all around me while I waited.

  And then came a Thursday when Chris put his arm around me as soon as I walked into Jake’s. “I have to do an errand,” he said. “Want a Coke first?”

  “I’m supposed to be at my sister’s class by six,” I said. In case he hadn’t been asking me to go with him, I would just seem to be saying something factual.

  “I’ll get you there,” Chris said. He stood in back of me and put both arms around my shoulders, and I could feel exactly where he was touching me. Chris’s friends had neutral expressions on their faces as if nothing was happening, and I tried to look as if nothing was happening, too.

  As we were going out the door, a girl coming in grabbed Chris. “Are you leaving?” she said.

  “Yeh,” Chris told her.

  “Well, when can I talk to you?” she asked.

  “I’ll be around later, honey,” Chris said, but he just kept walking. “Christ, what a bimbo,” he said to me, shaking his head, and I felt ashamed for no reason.

  When Chris drove his fast little bright car it seemed like part of him, and there I was, inside it, too. I felt that we were inside a shell together, and we could see everything that was outside it, and we drove and drove and Chris turned the music loud. And suddenly Chris said, “I’d really like to see you a lot more. It’s too bad you can’t come into the city more often.” I didn’t know what to say, but I gathered that he didn’t expect me to say anything.

  We parked in a part of the city where the buildings were huge and squat. Chris rang a bell and we ran up flights of wooden stairs to where a man in white slacks and an unbuttoned shirt was waiting.

  “Joel, this is Laurel,” Chris said.

  “Hello, Laurel,” Joel said. He seemed to think there was something funny about my name, and he looked at me the way I’ve noticed grown men often do, as if I couldn’t see them back perfectly well.

  Inside, Chris and Joel went through a door, leaving me in an enormous room with white sofas and floating mobiles. The room was immaculate except for a silky purple-and-gold kimono lying on the floor. I picked up the kimono and rubbed it against my cheek and put it on over my clothes. Then I went and looked out the window at the city stretching on and on. In a building across the street, figures moved slowly behind dirty glass. They were making things, I suppose.

  After a while Chris and Joel burst back into the room. Chris’s eyes were shiny, and he was grinning like crazy.

  “Hey,” Joel said, grabbing the edges of the kimono I was wearing. “That thing looks better on her than on me.”

  “What wouldn’t?” Chris said. Joel stepped back as Chris put his arms around me from behind again.

  “I resent that, I resent that! But I don’t deny it!” Joel said. Chris was kissing my neck and my ears, and both he and Joel were giggling.

  I wondered what would happen if Chris and I were late and Mother saw me drive up in Chris’s car, but we darted around in the traffic and shot along the avenues and pulled up near Penelope’s dancing school with ten minutes to spare. Then, instead of saying anything, Chris just sat there with one hand still on the wheel and the other on the shift, and he didn’t even look at me. When I just experimentally touched his sleeve and he still didn’t move, I more or less flung myself on top of him and started crying into his shirt. I was in his lap, all tangled up, and I was kissing him and kissing him, and my hands were moving by themselves.

  Suddenly I thought of all the people outside the car walking their bouncy little dogs, and I thought how my mother might pull up at any second, and I sat up fast and opened my eyes. Everything looked slightly different from the way it had been looking inside my head—a bit smaller and farther away—and I realized that Chris had been sitting absolutely still, and he was staring straight ahead.

  “Goodbye,” I said, but Chris still didn’t move or even look at me. I couldn’t understand what had happened to Chris.

  “Wait,” Chris said, still without looking at me. “Here’s my phone number.” He shook himself and wrote it out slowly.

  At the corner I looked back and saw that Chris was still there, leaning back and staring out the windshield.

  “Why did he give me his phone number, do you think?” I asked Maureen. We were at a party in Peter Klingeman’s basement.

  “I guess he wants you to call him,” Maureen said. I know she didn’t really feel like talking. Kevin was standing there, with his hand under her shirt, and she was sort of jumpy. “Frankly, Laurel, he sounds a bit weird to me, if you don’t mind my saying,” Maureen said. I felt ashamed again. I wanted to talk to Maureen more, but Kevin was pulling her off to the Klingemans’ TV room.

  Then Dougie Pfeiffer sat down next to me. “I think Maureen and Kevin have a really good relationship,” he said.

  I was wondering how I ever could have had a crush on him in eighth grade when I realized it was my turn to say something. “Did you ever notice,” I said, “how some people say ‘in eighth grade’ and other people say ‘in the eighth grade’?”

  “Laurel,” Dougie said, and he grabbed me, shoving his tongue into my mouth. Then he took his tongue back out and let me go. “God, I’m sorry, Laurel,” he said.

  I didn’t really care what he did with his tongue. I thought how his body, under his clothes, was just sort of an outline, like a kid’s drawing, and I thought of the long zipper on Chris’s leather jacket, and a little rip I noticed once in his jeans, and the weave of the shirt that I’d cried on.

  I carried Chris’s phone number around with me everywhere, and finally I asked my mother if I could go into the city after school on Thursday and then meet her at Penelope’s class.

  “No,” Mother said.

  “Why not?” I said.

  “We needn’t discuss this, Laurel,” my mother said.

  “You let me go in to see Dr. Wald,” I said.

  “Don’t,” Mother said. “Anyhow, you can’t just…wander around in New York.”

  “I have to do some shopping,” I said idiotically.

  Mother started to say something, but then she stopped, and she looked
at me as if she couldn’t quite remember who I was. “Oh, who cares?” she said, not especially to me.

  There was a permanent little line between Mother’s eyebrows, I noticed, and suddenly I felt I was seeing her through a window. I went up to my room and cried and cried, but later I couldn’t get to sleep, thinking about Chris.

  I called him Thursday.

  “What time is it?” he said with his blistery laugh. “I just woke up.” He told me he had gone to a party the night before and when he came out his car had been stolen. He was stoned, and he thought the sensible thing was to walk over to Mark’s place, which is miles from his, but on the way he found his car parked out on the street. “I should’ve reported it, but I figured, hey, what a great opportunity, so I just stole it back.”

  Chris didn’t mention anything about our seeing each other.

  “I’ve got to come into the city today to do some stuff,” I said.

  “Yeah,” Chris said. “I’ve got a lot to do today myself.”

  Well, that was that, obviously, unless I did something drastic. “I thought I’d stop in and say hi, if you’re going to be around,” I said. My heart was jumping so much it almost knocked me down.

  “Great,” Chris said. “That’s really sweet.” But his voice sounded muted, and I wasn’t at all surprised when I got to Jake’s and he wasn’t there. I was on my third Coke when Chris walked in, but a girl wearing lots of bracelets waylaid him at the bar, and he sat down with her.

  I didn’t dare finish my Coke or ask for my check. All I could do was stay put and do whatever Chris made me do. Finally the girl at the bar left, giving Chris a big, meaty kiss, and he wandered over and sat down with me.

  “God. Did you see that girl who was sitting with me?” he said. “That girl is so crazy. There’s nothing she won’t put in her mouth. I was at some party a few weeks ago, and I walk in through this door, ’cause I’m looking for the john, and there’s Beverly, lying on the floor stark naked. So you know what she does?”

  “No,” I said.

  “She says, ‘Excuse me,’ and instead of putting something on she reaches up and turns out the light. Now, that’s thinkin’, huh?” He laughed. “Have you finished all those things you had to do?” he asked me.

  “Yes,” I said.

  “That’s great,” Chris said. “I’m really running around like a chicken today. Honey,” he said to a waitress, “put that on my tab, will you?” He pointed at my watery Coke.

  “Sandra was looking for you,” the waitress said. “Did she find you?”

  “Yeah, thanks,” Chris said. He gave me a kiss on the cheek, which was the first time he had kissed me at all, except at Joel’s, and he left.

  I knew I had made some kind of mistake, but I couldn’t figure out what it was. I would only be able to figure it out from Chris, but it would be two weeks until I saw him again. Every night, I looked out the window at the red glow of the city beyond all the quiet little houses and yards, and every night after I got into bed I felt it draw nearer and nearer, hovering just beyond my closed eyes, with Chris inside it. While I slept, it receded again; but by morning, when I woke up and put on my school clothes, I had come one day closer.

  After my next appointment with Dr. Wald, Chris wasn’t at Jake’s. For the first time since I had gone to Jake’s, Chris didn’t come at all.

  On the way home it was all I could do not to cry in front of Mother and Penelope. And I wondered what I was going to do from that afternoon on.

  “And how was Dr. Wald today?” my father said when we sat down for dinner.

  “I didn’t ask,” I said.

  My father paused to acknowledge my little joke.

  “What I meant,” he said, “was how is my lovely daughter?”

  I knew he was trying to say something nice, but he could have picked something sincere for once. I hated the way he had taken off his jacket and opened up his collar and rolled up his sleeves, and I thought I would be sick if he stood behind my chair later. “Penelope is your lovely daughter,” I said, and threw my silverware onto the table.

  From upstairs I listened. I knew that Penelope would have frozen, the way she does when someone says in front of me how pretty she is, but no one said anything about me that I could hear.

  Later, Penelope and Paul and I made up a story together, the way we had when we were younger. Paul fell asleep suddenly in the middle with little tears in the corners of his eyes, and I tucked Penelope into bed. When I smoothed out the covers, a shadow of relief crossed her face.

  That Saturday, Mother took me shopping in the city without Penelope or Paul. “I thought we should get you a present,” Mother said. “Something pretty.” She smiled at me in a strange, stiff way.

  “Thank you,” I said. I felt good that we were driving together, but I was sad, too, that Mother was trying to bring me into the clean, bright, fancy, daytime part of New York that Penelope’s dancing school was in, because when would she accept that there was no place there for me? I wondered if Mother wanted to say something to me, but we just drove silently, except for once, when Mother pointed out a lady in a big, white, flossy fur coat.

  At Bonwit’s, Mother picked out an expensive dress for me. “What do you think?” she said when I tried it on.

  I was glad that Mother had chosen it, because it was very pretty, and it was white, and it was expensive, but in the mirror I just looked skinny and dazed. “I like it,” I said. “But don’t you think it looks wrong on me?”

  “Well, it seems fine to me, but it’s up to you,” Mother said. “You can have it if you want.”

  “But look, Mother,” I said. “Look. Do you think it’s all right?”

  “If you don’t like it, don’t get it,” she said. “It’s your present.”

  At home after dinner I tried the white dress on again and stared at myself in the mirror, and I thought maybe it looked a little better.

  I went down to the living room, where Mother was stretched out on the sofa with her feet on my father’s lap. When I walked in he started to get up, but Mother didn’t move. “My God,” my father said. “It’s Lucia.”

  My mother giggled. “Wedding scene or mad scene?” she said.

  Upstairs I folded the dress back into the box for Bonwit’s to pick up. At night I watched bright dancing patterns in the dark and I dreaded going back to Dr. Wald.

  The doctor didn’t seem to notice anything unusual at my next appointment. I still had to face walking the short distance to Jake’s, though. I practically fell over from relief when I saw Chris at the bar, and he reached out as I went by and reeled me in, smiling. He was talking to Mark and some other friends, and he stood me with my back to him and rubbed my shoulders and temples. I tried to smile hello to Mark, who was staring at me with his pale eyes, but he just kept staring, listening to Chris. I closed my eyes and leaned back against Chris, who folded his arms around me. When Chris finished his story, everyone laughed except me. Chris blew a little stream of air into my hair, ruffling it up. “Want to take a ride?” he said.

  We drove for a while, fast, circling the city, and Chris slammed tapes into the tape deck. Then we parked and Chris turned and looked at me.

  “What do you want to do?” Chris asked me.

  “Now?” I said, but he just looked at me, and I didn’t know what he meant. “Nothing,” I said.

  “Have I seemed preoccupied to you lately, honey?” he asked.

  “I guess maybe a little,” I said, even though I hadn’t really ever thought about how he seemed. He just seemed like himself. But he told me that yes, he had been preoccupied. He had borrowed some money to start an audio business, but he had to help out a cousin, too. I couldn’t make any sense of what he was talking about, and I didn’t really care, either. I was thinking that now he had finally called me “honey.” It made me so happy, so happy, even though “honey” was what he called everyone, and I had been the only Laurel.

  Chris talked and talked, and I watched his mouth as the words came out. “I
know you wonder what’s going on with me,” he said. “What it is is I worry that you’re so young. I’m a difficult person. There are a lot of strange things about me. I’m really crazy about you, you know. I’m really crazy about you, but I can’t ask you to see me.”

  “Why don’t I come in and stay over with you a week from Friday,” I said. “Can I?”

  Chris blinked. “Terrific, honey,” he said cautiously. “That’s a date.”

  I arranged it with Maureen that I would say I was staying at her house. “Don’t wear underwear,” Maureen told me. “That really turns guys on.”

  Chris and I met at Jake’s, but we didn’t stay there long. We drove all over the city, stopping at different places. Chris knew people everywhere, and we would sit down at the bar and talk to them. We went to an apartment with some of the people we ran into, where everyone lay around listening to tapes. And once we went to a club and watched crowds of people change like waves with the music, under flashing lights.

  Chris didn’t touch me, not once, not even accidentally, all during that time.

  Sometime between things we stopped for food. I couldn’t eat, but Chris seemed starving. He ate his cheeseburger and French fries, and then he ate mine. And then he had a big piece of pecan pie.

  Late, very late, we climbed into the car again, but there was nothing left to do. “Home?” Chris said without turning to me.

  Chris’s apartment seemed so strange, and maybe that was just because it was real. But I had surely never been inside such a small, plain place to live before, and Chris hardly seemed to own anything. There were a few books on a shelf, and a little kitchen off in the corner, with a pot on the stove. It was up several flights of dark stairs, in a brick building, and it must have been on the edge of the city, because I could see water out the window, and ribbons of highway elevated on huge concrete pillars, and dark piers.

  Chris’s bed, which was tightly made with the sheet turned back over the blanket, looked very narrow. All the music we had been hearing all night was rocketing around in my brain, and I felt jittery and a bit sick. Chris passed a joint to me, and he lay down with his hands over his eyes. I sat down on the edge of the bed next to him and waited, but he didn’t move. “Remember when I asked you a while ago what you wanted to do and you said ‘Nothing’?” Chris asked me.