“What about you?” he said.
“What about me?” I said.
“If I can even still get reservations,” he said.
“Call and see,” I said. “I’ll call.” Linda had probably never, in awe of Ivan’s honey-colored elegance that was so like her own, hesitated to touch him as I sometimes did. As I did right now.
The next day, Ivan bought some toys, much more cheerful and robust than the child they were for, and then I watched him pack. And then we went out to the airport together.
I took the little airport bus back alone, and I felt I had been equipped by a mysterious agency: I knew without asking how to transport myself into a foreign city, my pockets were filled with its money, and in my hand I had a set of keys to an apartment there. The snow still fell lightly, detaching itself piece by piece from the white sky, absorbing all the sound. And the figures past which we rode looked almost immobile in their heavy clothing, and not quite formed, as if they were bodies waiting to be inhabited by displaced souls. In the dark quiet of the bus, I let myself drift. Cities, the cities where I visited Ivan, were repositories of these bodies waiting to be animated, I thought sleepily, but how did a soul manage to incarnate itself in one?
All night long I slept easily, borne away on the movements of my new, unfettered life, but I awoke to a jarring silence. Ivan had taken the clock.
I looked around. It was probably quite late. The sun was already high, and the frost patterns, which seemed always on the verge of meaning, were being sucked back to the edges of the window as I stared. In the kitchen I sat and watched the light pooling in rich winter tints across the linoleum, and eventually the pink-and-pewter evening came, and frost patterns encroached on the windows again. How quickly the day had disappeared. The day had sat at the kitchen window, but the earth had simply rolled away from under it.
It was light again when I woke. I thought suddenly of the little plant on my windowsill in New York. It would be dead by now. I felt nauseated, but then I remembered I hadn’t eaten the day before.
There was nothing in the refrigerator, but in the freezer compartment I found a roll of chocolate-chip-cookie dough. How unlike Ivan to have such a thing—what circumstances had prompted him to buy it? Ah—I saw Micheline and Ivan with a shopping cart, laughing: the purists’ night off.
I searched through the pots and pans—what a lot of clatter—but there was a cookie sheet. Good. I turned on the oven and sawed through the frozen dough. Soon the kitchen was filling with warmth. But an assaultive odor underlay it, and when I opened the oven door, I found the remains of a leg of lamb from earlier in the week that we’d forgotten to put away. The bone stood out, almost translucent, and the porous sheared face of meat was still red in the center. “Get rid of all this old stuff,” I heard myself say out loud in a strange, cheerful voice, and I jabbed a large fork into it. But I had to sit for several minutes breathing deeply with my head lowered before I managed to dump the lamb into the garbage can along with the tray of dough bits and get myself back into bed, where I stayed for the rest of the day.
The next afternoon, it seemed to me that I was ready to go out of the apartment. I took a hot bath, cleansing myself carefully. Then I looked through my clothing, taking it out and putting it away, piece by piece. None of the things I’d brought with me seemed right. Steam poured from the radiators, but the veil of warmth hardly softened the little pointed particles of cold in the room.
The hall closet was full of women’s clothes, and there I found everything I needed. I supposed it all belonged to Micheline, but everything felt roomy enough, even though she looked so small. I selected a voluminous skirt, a turtleneck jersey, and a long, heavy sweater. There was a pair of boots as well—beautiful boots, fine-grained and sleek. If they belonged to Micheline, they must have been a gift. Surely she never would have chosen them for herself.
The woman who stood in the mirror was well assembled, but the face, above the heavy, dark clothing, was indistinct in the brilliant sunlight. I made up my eyes heavily, and then my mouth with a red lipstick that was sitting on Ivan’s bureau, and checked back with the mirror. Much better. Then I found a jacket that probably belonged to Ivan, and a large shawl, which I arranged around my head and shoulders.
Outside, everything was outlined in a fluid brilliance, and underfoot the snow emitted an occasional dry shriek. The air was as thin as if it might break, fracturing the landscape along which I walked: broad, flat-roofed buildings with blind windows, low upon the endless sky. There were other figures against the landscape, all bundled up like myself against the cold, and although the city was still unfathomable, I could recall no other place, and the rudiments of a past seemed to be hidden here for me somewhere, beyond my memory.
I entered a door and was plunged into noise and activity. I was in a supermarket arranged like a hallucination, with aisles shooting out in unexpected directions, and familiar and unfamiliar items perched side by side. If only I had made a list! I held my cart tightly, trusting the bright packages to draw me along correctly and guide me in my selections.
The checkout girl rang up my purchases: eggs (oh, I’d forgotten butter; well, no matter, the eggs could always be boiled, or used in something); a replacement roll of frozen cookie dough; a box of spaghetti; a jar of pickled okra from Texas; a package of mint tea; foil; soap powder; cleanser; violet toilet paper (an item I’d never seen before); and a bottle of aspirin. The girl took my money, glancing at me.
Several doors along, I stopped at a little shop filled with pastries. There were trays of jam tarts and buns, and plates piled up with little chocolate diamond shapes, and pyramids of caramelized spheres, and shelves of croissants and tortes and cookies, and the most wonderful aroma surged around me. “Madame?” said a woman in white behind the counter.
I looked up at her, over a shelf of frosted cakes that held messages coded in French. On one of them a tiny bride and groom were borne down upon by shining sugar swans, and my heart fluttered high up against my chest like a routed moth. I spoke, though, resolutely in English: “Everything looks so good.” Surely that was an appropriate thing to say—surely people said that. “Wait.” I pointed at a tray of evergreen-shaped cookies covered with green sugar crystals. Tiny bright candies had been placed on them at intervals to simulate ornaments. “There.”
“Very good,” the woman said. “The children like these very much.”
“Good,” I said. What had she meant? “I’ll take a dozen.”
“Did you have a pleasant Christmas?” she asked me, nestling my cookies into a box.
“Yes,” I said, perhaps too loudly, but she didn’t seem to notice the fire that roared over me. “And you?”
“Very good,” she said. “I was with my sister. All the children were home. But now today it feels so quiet.” She smiled, and I understood that her communication had been completed, and we both inclined our heads slightly as I left.
“Hello,” I said uncertainly to the butcher in the meat market next door. It occurred to me that I ought to stop and get something nourishing.
“What can I do for you?” the butcher asked in easy English.
“Actually,” I said dodging a swift memory of the leg of lamb in Ivan’s garbage can, “I’d like something for supper.” Ah! I had to smile—what the woman in the bakery had been telling me was how it felt to be a person when one’s sister and some children were around.
“Something in particular?” the butcher asked. “If I’m not being too nosy?”
“Please,” I said across a wall of nausea. “Sausages.” That had been good thinking—at least they would be in casings.
“Sausages,” he said. “How many sausages?”
“Not so many,” I said, trying not to think too concretely about the iridescent hunks of meat all around me.
“Let’s see,” he said. “Should we say…for two?”
“Good,” I said. Fortunately there was a chair to wait in. “Did you have a pleasant Christmas?” I asked.
“Oh, excellent,” I said. I supposed from his silence that that had been insufficient, so I continued. “It feels so quiet today, though. All the children have gone back.”
“Oh, I know that quiet,” the butcher said. “When they go.”
“They’re not exactly my children, of course,” I said. “They’re my sister’s. Stepsister’s, I mean. My sister would be too young a person to have children old enough to go back anywhere. You know,” I said, “I have a friend who believes that in a sense it doesn’t matter whether I’m a person with a stepsister who has children or whether someone else is.”
The butcher looked at me. “Interesting point,” he said. “That’s five seventy-eight with tax.”
“I know it sounds peculiar,” I said, counting out the price. “But this friend really believes that, assuming there’s a person with a stepsister, it just doesn’t ultimately matter—to the universe, for instance—whether that person happens to be me or whether that person happens to be someone else. And I was thinking—does it actually matter to you whether that person is me or that person is someone else?”
“To me…does it matter to me…” The butcher handed me my package. “Well, to me, sweetheart, you are someone else.”
“Well.” I laughed uneasily. “No. But do you mean—wait—I’m not sure I understand. That is, did you mean that I might as well be the person with the stepsister? That it’s an error to identify oneself as the occupant of a specific situation?” The butcher looked at me again. “I mean, how would you describe the difference between the place you occupy in the world and the place I occupy?”
“Well”—his eyes narrowed thoughtfully—“I’m standing over here, I see you standing over there, like that.”
“Oh—” I said.
“So,” he said. “Got everything? Know where you are?”
“Thanks,” I said. “Yes.”
“You’re all set, then,” he said. “Enjoy the sausages.”
Back at the apartment, I unpacked my purchases and put them away. Strange, that I missed Ivan so much more when we were together than when we were apart.
I was dozing when I heard noises in the kitchen. I went to investigate and found a man with black hair and pale, pale skin standing near the table and holding the bakery box to his ear as if it were a seashell.
“Sorry,” he said, putting it down. “The door was open. Where’s Ivan?”
“Gone,” I said.
“Oh,” he said. “Be back soon?”
“No,” I said. Well, I was up. I put on the kettle.
“Sit down,” he said. “Relax. I don’t bite.” He laughed—the sound of breaking dishes. “Name’s Eugene.” He held out a hand to me. “Mind if I sit for a minute, too? Foot’s killing me.”
He pulled up a chair across from me and sat, his long-lashed eyes cast down.
“What’s the matter with your foot?” I said after a while.
“Well, I’m not exactly sure. Doctor told me it was a calcium spur. Doesn’t bother me much, except just occasionally.” He fell silent for a minute. “Maybe I should see the guy again, though. Sometimes things…become exacerbated, I guess is how you’d put it. Turn into other things, almost.”
I nodded, willing him toward the door. I wanted to sleep. I wanted to have a meal.
“I was walking around, though,” he said, “and I thought I’d drop in to see Ivan.”
“I’m going to have a cup of tea,” I said. “Do you want one?”
“He doesn’t have any herb tea, does he?” Eugene said. “It’s good for the nerves. Soothing.” He was wearing heavy motorcycle boots, I saw, that were soaking wet. No wonder his feet hurt. “Yeah, Ivan owes me some money,” he said. “Thought I’d drop by and see if he had it on him by some chance.”
I put the teapot and cups on the table. I wondered how soon I could get Eugene to go.
“Where’re you from?” Eugene said. “You’re not from here, are you?”
“New York,” I said. I also wanted to get out of these clothes. They were becoming terribly uncomfortable.
“Yeah, that’s what I thought. I thought so.” He laughed miserably again. “Good old rotten apple.”
“Don’t like it much, huh?” I said.
“Oh, I like it all right,” Eugene said. “I love it. I was born and raised there. Whole family’s there. Yeah, I miss it a lot. From time to time.” He sipped delicately at his tea, still looking down. Then he tossed his thick black hair back from his face, as if he were aware of my stare.
“Aren’t you cold?” I asked suddenly. “Walking around like that?” I reached over to his leather jacket.
“Oh, I’m fine, thank you, dear,” he said. “I enjoy this. Of course I’ve got a scarf on, too. Neck’s a very sensitive part of the body. Courting disaster to expose the neck to the elements. But this is my kind of weather. I’d live outside if I could.” He lifted his eyes to me. They were pale and shallow, and they caught the light strangely, like pieces of bottle glass under water. “Candy?” he said, taking a little vial from his pocket and shaking some of its powdery contents out onto the table.
“No, thanks,” I said.
“Mind if I do?” He drew a wad of currency from another pocket and peeled off a large bill.
“That’s pretty,” I said, watching him roll it into a tight brown tube stippled with green and red. “I’ve never seen that one before.”
“Pretty,” he said. “You bet it’s pretty. It’s a cento. Still play money to me, though. A lot better than that stingy little monochrome crap back home, huh?”
Eugene tipped some more from the vial onto the table.
“So why don’t you go back?” I said. “If you like it so much.”
“Go back.” He sniffed loudly, eyes closed. “You know, I don’t feel this stuff the way a woman does. They say it’s a woman’s drug. I don’t get that feeling at the back of my head, like you can.” His light eyes rested on my face. “Well, I can’t go back. Not unless they extradite me.”
“For what?” Maybe I could just ask Eugene to go. Or maybe I could grab his teacup and smash it on the floor.
“Shot a guy,” he said.
“Yes?” I tucked my feet under me. This annoying skirt! I hated the feeling of wool next to my skin.
“Now, don’t get all nervous,” Eugene said. “It was completely justified. Guy tried to hurt me. I’d do it again, too. Fact, I said so to the judge. My lawyer kept telling me, ‘Shut up, maniac, shut up.’ And he told the judge, ‘Your Honor, you can see yourself my client’s as crazy as a lab rat.’ How do you like that? So I said, ‘Listen, Judge. What would you do if some cocksucker pulled a knife on you? I may be crazy, but I’m no fool.’” Eugene leaned back and put his hands against his eyes.
I poured myself some more tea. It felt thick going down. I hadn’t even had water, I remembered, for some time. “Would you like another cup?” I asked.
“Yeah,” Eugene said. “Thanks.”
“You know Ivan a long time?” he asked.
“Nine years,” I said.
“Nine years. A lot of bonds can be forged in nine years. So how come I never met you? Ivan and I hang out.”
“Oh, God, I don’t know,” I said. “It’s an on-and-off type of thing. We’re thrashing it out together now.”
“You’re thrashing it out together,” he said. “You’re thrashing it out together, but I only see one of you.”
“Right,” I said. “So how did you get to Canada, anyhow?”
“Oh. They put me in the hospital,” he said. “But I’ve got friends. Here,” he said. “Look.” He emptied a pocket onto the table. There was a key chain, and an earring, and something that I presumed was a switchblade, and a bundle of papers—business cards and phone numbers and all sorts of miscellany—that he started to read out to me. “Jesus,” he said, noticing me inspecting his knife. “You’ll take your whole arm off that way. Do it like this.” He demons
trated, flashing the blade out, then he folded it up and put it back in his pocket. “Here—look at this one.” He handed me a card covered with a meaningless mass of dots. “Now hold it up to the light.” He grabbed it back and placed it over a lamp near me. The dots became a couple engaged in fellatio. “Isn’t that something?”
“Yes,” I said. “I think you should go now, though. I have to do some things.” His face was changing and changing in front of me. He receded, rippling.
“Wait—” he said. “You don’t look good. Have you been eating right?”
“I’m all right,” I said. “I don’t care. Please leave.”
“You’re in bad shape, lady,” he said. “You’re not well. Sure you don’t want any of this?” He offered me the vial. “Pick you right up. Then we’ll fix you some more tea or something. Get some vitamins into you.”
“No, no. It’s just these clothes,” I said, plucking at them. “I’ve got to get out of these clothes.” He was beautiful, I saw. He was beautiful. He sparkled with beauty; it streamed from him in glistening sheets, as if he were emerging from a lake of it. I kicked at Micheline’s boots, but Eugene was already kneeling, and he drew them off, and the thick stockings, too, and my legs appeared, very long, almost shining in the growing dark, from beneath them.
“Got ’em,” he said, standing.
“Yes,” I said, holding my arms up. “Now get this one,” and he pulled the sweater over my head.
“Sh-h-h,” he said, folding the sweater neatly. “It’s O.K.” But I was rattling inside my body like a Halloween skeleton as he carried me to Ivan’s bed and wrapped a blanket around me.
“Look how white,” I said. “Look how white your skin is.”
“When I was in the jungle it was like leather,” he said. “Year and a half, shoe leather. Sh-h-h,” he said again, as I flinched at a noise. “It’s just this.” And I understood that it was just his knife, inside his pocket, that had made the noise when he’d dropped his clothes on the floor. “You like that, huh?” he said, holding the knife out for me.
Again and again and again I made the blade flash out, severing air from air, while Eugene waited. “That’s enough now,” he said. “First things first. You can play with that later.”
The Collected Stories of Deborah Eisenberg Page 16