The Collected Stories of Deborah Eisenberg

by Deborah Eisenberg

  “A little water,” Norman said as Elena took a delicate sip.

  “A little water with a big gin,” Marcos said.

  “Yes, give me one of those, please, Norman,” Elena said.

  “And for me, too, please,” Marcos said.

  “Nothing for me, thank you,” I said.

  “Oh, come on,” Sandra said.

  “No, really,” I said. “Thank you.”

  “These two live right next door,” Sandra said, indicating the hedge through which Mister and the rabbit made their frequent appearances. “And this one”—she tucked my arm under hers—“lives upstairs. She came all the way from—from—America”—Sandra landed with relief on the word—“and now she’s right here in this garden. She hates us, isn’t that right?” Sandra winked at Elena. “We’re bad neighbors and she hates us.”

  “You must forgive me, please,” Elena said to me. “I do not speak very well English. Marcos, my husband, he speak it very well.”

  “You speak English like a princess,” Sandra said. “Just like a princess. Isn’t it odd, you know, how you can live right next door to people and never see them at all?” Marcos smiled, allowing a dark radiance to flow briefly out to Sandra.

  “Here we are,” Norman said. “Three waters, one water, and a nothing.”

  “Norman and I were just telling these lovely people about some of our other friends right here in town,” Sandra said. “Now. You don’t know Dr. and Mrs. Rafaelson, you said. Skipper and Lillian.”

  “Unfortunately, we do not,” Marcos said with finality.

  “Let’s see,” Sandra continued. “The Van Kirks, the Geldzahlers, the Murchisons—Oh! You must know the Dawsons. They do a lot of charity work at the church.”

  Elena’s black hair seemed to flex and breathe as she smoothed it back. “I do not think so, do we, Marcos?” Marcos took a sip of his drink and shook his head without looking up. I feared I was to be condemned along with the other invaders from the U.S. without getting my own trial.

  “Well, we’re all very fortunate to be able to live in a town with such fine people,” Norman said.

  Mister squeezed through the shrubbery and seated himself between his owners. He looked up adoringly at Marcos, his tail beating on the ground, and Marcos raised his glass slightly in salute. “Poop on Mister,” Sandra said as Elena bent down to stroke his fur.

  “Poop on Mister,” Norman said. “Mister Poops. We love Mister,” he explained to me.

  “Mister is a very good dog,” Elena said. “To get Mister we have to go to the place where—how do you say, that place—”

  “Pound,” Sandra said. “Kennel.”

  “The place where they make the dog that have the history, the good family…”

  “Dog breeder,” Norman said.

  “Yes, and now if Mister have good children they are worth very much in U.S. dollars.”

  “Oh, yes,” Norman said. “Lovely things, setters. Sandra and I have had many fine animals ourselves.”

  “But we don’t try, we don’t try to have him, how do you say that thing?”

  “That’s a thing we don’t say.” Sandra nudged me. “We don’t say it.”

  “Bred,” Norman said, nodding.

  “Yes, bred,” Elena said. “We don’t care about this thing.”

  “No, who cares?” Sandra said. “Dirty old dogs. Oh, Mister knows I love him.”

  “Yes, if they are healthy, the children, this is what we care,” Elena said.

  “Look.” Marcos rested a finger lazily on my wrist. “Do you see?” And I could just make out, in the direction he indicated, the outline of a peak—flat, like a shadow cast from some original behind us—that rose above the others.

  “The mountain,” I said, pleased. “This is the first time I’ve seen it.”

  “It does not like to be seen often,” Marcos said.

  “No?” I responded reluctantly to his coyness. “Why not?”

  “It is consecrated ground,” he said, tracing a pattern on his frosty glass. “Young girls used to be sacrificed there.” Perhaps he hoped to shock me, but of course I was already familiar with the facts. “Their blood was dedicated to the gods who made the sun rise.”

  “I know,” I said. “Those poor girls.”

  Marcos shrugged. “Those poor gods,” he said. “Compelled to make the sun rise, the days go around in their circle.”

  “Compelled?” I said. “I would have thought that gods could do as they liked.”

  “Oh, no.” Marcos lifted his eyes to me. I was annoyed by the degree to which he and his wife made their good looks a public concern, but I was not able to look away. “There are advantages, I am sure, to being a god, but that is not one of them. After all, prayer forces gods to respond, does it not?”

  “I suppose one could think of it that way,” I said. “I don’t happen to.”

  “No?” Marcos said. “But the rain, the revelation, the vision, the growth of crops, the investiture of wisdom or power—even salvation—these things have always been granted if the preparation is correct.”

  “Nevertheless,” I said, becoming crude in my irritation, “it seems rather wasteful, doesn’t it? All those girls hacked to bits to make the sun come up, when it seems to come up all by itself these days.”

  “Perhaps it does.” Marcos smiled. Against my will I imagined him dressing in front of the mirror, buttoning his shirt (as far as he had buttoned it) over his muscular chest while his eyes narrowed with satisfaction. “Or perhaps we benefit from the unselfish labors of our predecessors. Here the past lives on in us. Do you not see it when you look at me? The raised basalt knife, the bound virgin, the living heart plucked from the breast—”

  “Please,” I said. “That’s quite enough. Besides, everyone has a history. I suppose you’re saying that I am a…that I’m a…” But I was too addled by his gruesome joking to think of an analogy.

  “Yes,” he said. “You see? You do not know what you are. You come from a corner of America that eradicated its original population. For you the past is something that is terminated, because your own past is an erasure. What a sad thing, I think! You cannot look back and see your present, you cannot look inward and see your future—”

  “That may be so,” I said evenly, though I could feel myself flushing with rage—surely it was the presence of Sandra and Norman that had provoked this platitudinous sermonizing. “But I should think you would be grateful to have that particular chapter of your history shelved. Some people consider it barbaric, you know. Besides, it seems to me that you’re making great claims for an area that itself no longer has an indigenous culture. The people here now come from all over.”

  “From all over,” Marcos agreed, delighted. “Bringing with them civilized customs, yes? They come from wherever one can be indicted for tax evasion. Or war crimes. Or fraud. They come for the climate.” He looked at me. “And for what have you come?”

  “The climate,” I said, tears stinging from behind my eyes as he laughed.

  “I have upset you,” he said. “But I am only playing.” A spoiled, stuffy look came over him as he became bored with tormenting me. “My family, of course, is pure Spanish.”

  “Such a relief,” I said, “to learn that it is your practice also to usher in the sunrise without all that…‘preparation,’ I believe, is what you called it.”

  “Oh, I do not think we are suited for that now, in any case—that preparation,” he said. “Because at the final moment all of it must be discarded.”

  Now that I was utterly beside myself, Marcos seemed to have forgotten me entirely, and he spoke as if he were musing in private. “I’m afraid I don’t quite follow you,” I said stiffly.

  “Yes,” he said. “Selecting the sacrifice, bending one’s being to the desired thing, achieving the proper conditions for prayer—at the final moment this labor and struggle fall away like torn cloth, and the petitioner must face his goal unprotected. I do not think we, now, would be able to endure that.”

/>   “Endure what, you two?” Sandra said, turning to us. “What don’t you think we could endure?” She gestured vaguely. “We can endure this. Anyhow—” She took both my hands as I stood up to go, and she looked into my face searchingly. “The main thing is, Are You Having Fun?”

  “Yes,” I said. “Of course.”

  “Good.” She released me and shook her head slowly. “Because that’s the main thing.”

  Now Marcos began to appear in my dreams. He was a jeering, insistent, impinging presence, but once, just before I awoke, he repented and took me, for comfort, into his arms. I showered immediately upon getting out of bed, but the feeling of him clung to me maddeningly throughout the day.

  One morning soon afterward I was on my way out when Norman and Sandra called to me from the patio. “If it isn’t just the lady we were talking about!” Sandra said. “Come have breakfast with Mr. and Mrs. Useless. Dolores—” she called, pointing at me.

  “Of course, we don’t want to keep you if you have things to do,” Norman said, as I hesitated.

  “Oh, she doesn’t have anything to do,” Sandra said.

  “No, the reason we hoped to see you this morning,” Norman said, “is that some very old, very dear friends of ours, Gerald and Helen Moffat, have just come in from Minneapolis, and we’re having a little party for them this evening. We thought maybe we’d forgotten to tell you.”

  “Are you from Minneapolis?” I asked.

  “No,” Norman said. “Our friends are.”

  “Norman,” Sandra said, “have you spoken to Skipper and Lillian again?”

  “Well,” Norman said, “they’ll do their damnedest to make it, but apparently Skipper hasn’t been feeling too well. Nothing serious. But,” Norman said to me, “there will be plenty of lovely people, and you’re a lovely person, and we know you’ll enjoy the others.”

  “Thank you,” I said. First my morning, and now my evening. “I’ll certainly come, unless—”

  “Now, where—” Sandra twisted around in her chair. “Oh, there,” she said as Dolores appeared with a glass of juice and a plate of bacon and eggs for me.

  Norman broke off a gardenia from a plant near him and put it on my plate. “Don’t we do everything beeyoutifully?” Sandra said.

  “Beeyoutifully, beeyoutifully,” Norman chanted.

  “And will the Moffats be staying with you?” I asked. “No, no,” Norman said. “They keep a lovely place here in town. Right out where our old place was. Just the other side of the golf club.”

  “Golf club,” Sandra said. “Golf club, golf club. Who knows what anybody’s talking about, with golf clubs and golf clubs? Anyhow, it sounds like some kind of expression, doesn’t it?” I looked at her politely. “‘Those people live just the other side of a golf club.’ It would mean, for instance, a tiny bit, but not too much. Just beyond the pale, kind of.” She laughed and clapped her hands together. “You would say, ‘Oh, those two? They’re lovely people, but they’ve gone just the other side of the golf club.’”

  “Oh, yes,” I said.

  “Dolores,” Sandra said, “we’re waiting for our coffee.”

  Norman turned to pinch back the gardenia plant. “They have a marvelous pool,” he said. “Just let us know if you want to use it. They’d be delighted.”

  “Is that to make it flower?” I asked him.

  “Yes,” Norman said. “I don’t know. These silly things just flower in this climate no matter what you do.” He got up to inspect some plants that made a border along the hedge. “That darned rabbit did a lot of damage, Sandra,” he said plaintively. “We’re going to have to get the boy to replace these.”

  “Well, anyhow,” I reassured him, “I haven’t seen it around lately.”

  “I’ll bet you’re dying for your coffee,” Sandra said. “I know I am.”

  “Where do you suppose it went?” I asked. “The rabbit.”

  Sandra made a face and brushed some crumbs from the table. “Just look at this mess,” she said.

  Norman straightened up and sighed. “He had to take it out,” he said, looking at the ground. “I don’t know why.”

  As Norman wandered farther along, poking at the plants, Sandra spoke rapidly to me in a low voice. “I think those people next door ate the rabbit,” she said. “But I don’t want to say that to Norman. He’d have a fit. He loves rabbits. That rabbit was such a pest, though, wasn’t it, eating all those plants. But it was cute. We don’t have them at home. Well, we do, I suppose, we could, but people eat them here.” She watched absently as Dolores approached, but then continued, enraged, “Oh, well, why not, after all? People have to eat.” As Dolores poured our coffee, Sandra looked at me and raised an eyebrow. “Thank you, Dolores,” she said with exaggerated graciousness.

  I was embarrassed, but Dolores seemed oblivious of the sudden savage rudeness that Sandra would occasionally unleash. “We eat cows,” I said.

  “You don’t happen to have anything like—a Valium, do you?” Sandra asked. “Or upstairs?”

  “I don’t,” I said. “No.”

  “Well, good for you. Who needs that stuff? Yes,” she said after a moment, “that’s true. We do eat cows. And chickies. And piggie-wigs. But they’re all revolting.”

  We sat and looked at Norman as he peered about among the plants. “This coffee is delicious,” I said.

  “Oh! If you want delicious—” Sandra said, jumping to her feet. She went inside and came back with a bottle. “Just try it,” she said.

  “What is it?” I asked. I looked from Sandra to Norman, who had returned to stand above me.

  “Don’t feel you have to, if you’re not in the mood,” he said.

  “Oh, Norman. It’s practically the national drink,” Sandra said.

  “But if she doesn’t want to—” Norman said.

  Sandra opened the bottle, and we all listened while she poured some into my coffee. “It’s just for her. To try.”

  I took a sip. “Lovely, isn’t it?” I said, although I found it strong and peculiar.

  Sandra watched me as I drank, her chin resting on the backs of her clasped hands. “Yes,” she said.

  She shook herself, as if from sleep, and poured from the bottle into Norman’s cup and then into her own. “Sandra—” Norman said. But she didn’t look at him, and the three of us drank, our eyes lowered.

  “Well…” Norman sighed. He raised himself up and shambled back to the border plants.

  “He can’t sit still,” Sandra said. “It worries me.”

  Norman shook his head once again over the plants and then turned back to us, shading his eyes from the sun. “Can I give you a ride somewhere?” he asked me. “I’ve got to go down to the golf club for a quick game.”

  “You see?” Sandra called gleefully. “Well, stay this side!”

  “I’m going into town,” I said. “I don’t think it’s on your way.”

  “Got to drive anyhow,” Norman said. “Just jump into the car, hippity-hop.”

  That evening the party glimmered below me with candles and lanterns. My room was like part of the evening, and as the rich murmur rose up to me I watched Dolores and a boy, who were both dressed in white with local weavings over their clothes, as they circulated, carrying trays among the guests. When I shut the door behind me to go downstairs, I could feel my apartment swell with dreams poised to overtake me on my return.

  I made a quick circle through the garden—naturally, Marcos and Elena were not there—and I noticed Simon Peter heading in my direction. I turned away just in time and found myself facing a snub-nosed woman in a ruffled dress, with sticky-looking yellow-brown rolls of hair like varnished wood shavings. “You don’t have a drink!” she said. “Well, I hope you can hold out for about an hour. The best thing to do is just to go in and pour yourself something, but it makes Norman so miserable if he sees. How long ago was it they moved from the big house? Nine years? Ten years? Still, I suppose it’s a difficult adjustment. Sandra looks quite well, though, doesn’t she?�
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  “Yes,” I said.

  “Sometimes it’s worse when she’s just come out of the clinic,” the woman said. “It’s hard to remember, isn’t it, that she was the one who really ran the show all those years when Norman was such a souse. Oh, she was just as capable as anything! Of course, he was always just…sweet, wasn’t he? A gentle man, Bob always says.”

  How dare she, I thought. How dare this stranger tell her friends’ secrets to me. But as I thought it I realized that Sandra and Norman had already offered me this information about themselves, and I looked down to avoid the reflection in this woman’s face of my own brutality and cowardice.

  “Such a pity about this weather,” the woman said. “All this haze. Or smog, whatever it is. We never used to have this.” She patted her careful permanent. “Oh, I see that you’re admiring my sash,” she said. “Guatemalan. Old, the girl said, and she seemed honest. I think she was German.”

  “I’m sure,” I said, looking around for Norman and Sandra. I would say good night and then leave.

  “Excuse me?” the woman said.

  “Pardon me?” I said. “Yes, it must be.”

  “Well, at least I was told it was,” the woman said. “They still do marvelous things, of course, but I wouldn’t recommend it. Bob and I were horribly disappointed ourselves last year. We had a wonderful view of the lake, but otherwise it was impossible. And the meals! Well, I’m sorry to have to tell you that it really wasn’t food at all.”

  “Perhaps I will go inside and get myself something,” I said, but at that moment the boy appeared with a tray of frothy drinks. He was very young, really a child, and he was absolutely radiant. He seemed delighted with his tray and his uniform.

  “Uh-uh,” the woman said loudly as the boy started to move off. “Hold still there.” As the woman drained her glass and exchanged it for a full one, I realized that the boy looked exactly like Dolores—he must have been her son.

  “Hello, hello,” Norman said. He was crossing past us on the lawn, and he held firmly by the elbow a woman who walked unsteadily in high-heeled sandals. “All set up, I see. Good.”