The Collected Stories of Deborah Eisenberg

by Deborah Eisenberg

  A mournful taxi-driver brought Caitlin, without commentary or questions, to the hotel where Holly had directed her. There Caitlin registered with a woman whose listlessness was almost overpowering. At least the woman spoke English, Caitlin thought—in fact, it seemed that almost everyone did.

  Caitlin’s room was an undeceiving simulation of luxury. Streaks of disinfectant testified to its cleanliness, and the faint stench of synthetics recalled best-forgotten mornings in motels. Caitlin followed a thunderous choking into the bathroom, where the toilet was paralyzed in a permanent flush. She washed her face with the fibrous soap that had been provided and inspected the other complimentary toiletries—tiny plastic packets, bonded shut, of shampoo and bath foam in violent, improbable colors.

  She sat on the bed and looked out the window. The hills around the town were covered with vegetation, fecund but dying; the town appeared to be constructed of pale, decomposing, organic concrete. There were fingerprints on the bleary clouds. No sense unpacking—she’d move to a happier hotel later. She left her suitcase in the closet and went downstairs to the restaurant, where she was to meet Holly.

  The restaurant was the color of dying vegetation. Most of the customers and all of the waitresses had heavy black hair and black, slightly slanting eyes that made their ordinary suits and dresses look to Caitlin like disguises. She ordered breakfast. Where was Holly?

  It was twenty years ago that Caitlin had found herself pregnant. She’d been on tour, in a small revue that had become unexpectedly popular, and she’d met Todd in the bar of the hotel where she was staying with the other members of her company. His childish respectability, his crafty innocence were comical, but he was very good-looking, and Caitlin was slightly drunk, and the whole thing was irresistibly ridiculous, not only to her but also to the boys from her cast, who were with her in the bar, waiting. In the morning, Caitlin let herself be persuaded to spend the night with Todd again, and by the end of the week he took her breath away.

  She swung back and forth across the gulf between her attraction to him and the stunning tedium of his conversation. At first the sensation was like a toy. The boys in the company came down with a group fever; Todd was, they agreed, delicious. The boys made up stories—uproarious, hyperbolic romances—in which Todd starred opposite Caitlin, the surrogate. All the boys, and Caitlin, too, would be weak with laughter by the time Todd appeared after the show to take her home, and then the boys would become pouty and sultry, throwing Todd into good-natured confusion. It didn’t matter, Caitlin thought; the show would be moving soon.

  But then she was pregnant. She would wake up in the morning and the fact would be waiting to claim her. During the day she would be blanketed by a dullness that was impossible to fight off—she couldn’t grasp anything for more than a moment.

  Of course, she could get rid of the baby—not much problem there—but then what was it she’d been planning for the whole rest of her life? The truth was, she thought alone in her hotel room, she couldn’t count on having this sort of job forever. And each time she brought herself to consider her course of action, what presented itself in place of an answer was a question once again.

  For whole minutes the world would be suspended, and she would feel emptily cheerful, even happy; then she would remember what was happening inside her and a heavy fear would press her down. Days and days passed in this way, and then one day, among the shreds of feelings that rose and fell around her on harsh little gusts, a sort of hope appeared. Gradually, it grew in substance and weight, and one night she had a dream.

  She dreamed that she was lying in her bed, exhausted and despairing, but then she noticed a wonderful piece of furniture against the wall, all covered with rosettes and cherubs. She got up from bed and opened it, and there, sparkling in the darkness, was the solution to her problems.

  It was a ridiculous dream, but when she woke up it struck her with the force of an actual possibility that the means for her happiness was right inside her. When she told Todd she was pregnant, his face registered a self-satisfaction that made her sick with rage, and then immediately he began to plan.

  For some time after they were married, Todd would plead with Caitlin to tell him what he’d done, but eventually he stopped, since it was clear that he’d done nothing. Later, he would beg Caitlin to stay, in a mounting voice and a mawkish, lofty, and fraudulent tone that drove her into venomous frenzies of threats. During several of these outbursts Holly had been in the room; she’d pushed at Caitlin’s knees and shrieked as though Caitlin really were going to leave that very second. “Don’t! Don’t!” Holly would cry. “Mama, don’t leeaave—” and then, for days afterward, the three of them would be shaken and fearful, shadowed by the horror of things that had almost been done.

  When Holly was three and a half, Caitlin really did leave. Todd was courteous and formal—he had become a great deal more self-possessed since his days at the hotel bar—but his efficiency in the matter of Holly revealed a long-entrenched and fully assimilated hatred, of which Caitlin had been entirely unaware. He had little trouble insuring that Caitlin’s access to Holly was legally limited; evidently he had been ready for some time.

  Now, as the waitress moved away, Holly appeared—different in immeasurable tiny details from the person who existed in the custody of Caitlin’s imagination—and gestured to one of the two men with her. “Mama, this is Brandon,” she said in her rapid little uninflected voice. “My fiancé.”

  Although he looked hardly older than Holly, Brandon had a finished, knife-edged glint. His eyes were shockingly blue and expressionless, and his hair was a lucent, pure flax color, to which Holly had attempted, apparently, to match her own. Fiancé? Later, when they could really talk, she must tell Holly not to do this.

  The other man, Lewis, must have been practically twice Holly’s age. He was large and a bit soft-looking. His curly hair was greasy, and coarsened from the sun; a pitted nose stuck out between his mustache and his aviator sunglasses. He wore jeans, and a short-sleeved shirt under which Caitlin could see a faded, rose-colored T-shirt clinging sensually to his broad torso.

  They sat down with Caitlin, and Lewis ordered breakfast for himself, Holly, and Brandon in Spanish. Holly’s natural expression, Caitlin noticed, was still stubborn and slightly worried—even as a toddler she had been literal-minded and deliberate. But she had lost some of Todd’s starchy look, and the tank top and shorts she was wearing suited her better than the ruffled things she’d favored as a child.

  Brandon stretched out his long legs and looked appraisingly at Caitlin. But Holly blinked rapidly, then glared at her plate and rubbed at a splotch on it with her thumb.

  “Well,” Caitlin said.

  “Glad you could take the time to come down here and join us all, ma’am,” Brandon said to her quietly. He turned the blue beacon of his stare on Holly. “Aren’t we, sweetheart?” he said, and she looked up at him, her mouth open.

  Brandon looked oddly clean, as though he’d just showered off some identifying characteristics, and his brilliant, empty eyes could have belonged to an animal—some creature attuned only to the most minute signals of scent and sound. His accent was identical with Holly’s, but his speech was alarmingly controlled. Fiancé! Well, of course it was all back in fashion now—table settings, shame, property agreements—but it seemed such a short time ago that no one had gotten married. No one, of course, except Todd.

  Holly cleared her throat. “So, what about those auditions you’ve been doing, Mama? You find anything good?”

  Caitlin pushed her hair back. “Nothing,” she said. “Everything around is shit.”

  “An entertainer, huh?” Lewis said, poking his fork toward Caitlin. “You know, I admire entertainers. I always had a bit of a secret letch to be an entertainer myself. I played the drums when I was a kid, drove the whole neighborhood nuts. Then when I got back from Vietnam my buddies and I had a band. Gross National Product—” Caitlin could see him look at her behind his aviator glasses. “Maybe you r
emember it?”

  “Not really,” she said politely.

  “‘Not really,’” he mimicked. “Surprise, surprise—no one fucking remembers. What do you want? We played exclusively scummy neighborhoods.”

  Holly and Brandon attended to their food with fastidious absorption, but there was a disturbance occurring in another part of the room. “Buenas,” someone was declaring loudly. Caitlin turned around to see a young man going from table to table, greeting the customers.

  “Buenas,” he announced, stopping at their table. “How are you fine people today?” His accent was so slight as to seem just a crisping around the edges of words. “I’m Ricky.” He extended to Caitlin a hand in a little black backless glove that snapped at the wrist. “Just down from Miami?”

  “Miami?” she said. His clothing looked like a scout uniform from a pornographic movie; his bare, heavily muscled thigh was level with her face.

  “I like Miami,” he said. His hands settled lightly, one on Holly’s shoulder, one on Brandon’s. “People there are friendly, not like here. This place—bunch of crazy refugees trying to stab you in the ass all the time.” He kneaded Holly’s shoulder absently under the strap of her tank top. “You got a plane?” he said to Brandon. “Maybe I’ll go up with you this weekend.”

  Holly had turned a bit pink, but Brandon was looking thoughtfully into the distance.

  In the silence, Ricky seemed to notice his hand on Holly’s shoulder. He lifted it and waved. “O.K., good people—see you at the club.”

  Brandon resumed eating and Holly continued to poke at her eggs as Caitlin looked from one to the other. “Friend of yours?” she said.

  Brandon’s look of extreme neutrality intensified. Neither he nor Holly looked up. “Because if you ask me,” Caitlin said, “there’s such a thing as just too stoned.”

  “Oh, we all know each other down here,” Lewis said. “Not like Guatemala. Here, everything’s under control. A place for everyone, everyone in his place. Small operation, enough pie to go around; smoothly functioning system of checks and balances.”

  “Remember when we used to play that game, Mama?” Holly said suddenly. She turned to look at Caitlin. “Remember that? We played ‘We’re in Holly’s room, in our house, in Durham, in North Carolina, in the United States of America, in the Western Hemi sphere, on the planet Earth, in the solar system, in the universe…’”

  Holly’s room, with its new furniture and the glut of horrible bears from Todd’s family. How could Holly remember that? She wouldn’t even have been four. She had played soberly with her bears and teacups while Caitlin, in a reverie of scene-study classes and rehearsals, had brushed the light, sweet hair back from her face and the two of them had pursued, in the stale, fruity afternoon sunlight, the protean task of being mother and daughter. “I remember,” Caitlin said.

  “Well,” Holly said. “Now we’re in the restaurant, in our hotel, in Tegucigalpa, in Honduras, in whatever it is, in the Western Hemi sphere, on the planet Earth, in the solar system, in the universe…”

  “‘Honduras’…” But where were the white sand and palm trees, vacationers spotting one another amid crowds of perspiring natives and trading private, approving glances? Well, of course, Caitlin knew, there were all kinds of other things going on now in this part of the world. “Just what exactly is this stuff we keep hearing about down here now?” she said, trying to construct something solid from fragments she’d heard on television.

  “You might be thinking of the war, ma’am,” Brandon said.

  “Yes…” Caitlin tried to remember. “Well, there’s a war here, of course.”

  “No, ma’am,” he said.

  Caitlin looked at him sharply. If only she’d been able to have Holly with her in New York more often! “Do you think you could find something else to call me?” she said.

  “Mama—” Holly began, but Brandon touched her wrist, and she looked down at the table.

  “Well,” Lewis said, standing. “I’ll just be off to freshen up a bit.”

  Brandon nodded to him, but Holly just stared at her plate, eyebrows furrowed. How helpless she looked! Caitlin reached over to her. “My baby,” she said. “Your hair used to be such a lovely ash brown.”

  “Hash brown, Mama,” Holly said. “Like yours.”

  “Honey?” Brandon said. He turned to Caitlin. “It’s a hard thing—here she hasn’t seen you in so long, and then you have to be going off again so soon.”

  “No I don’t,” Caitlin said.

  “Yes you do,” Holly said.

  “You know what?” Caitlin said, rage distending the words. “Why don’t we go to the beach right now, before some of us start to get mean?”

  “What beach?” Holly said. “Besides, Brandon has to work this afternoon, and I have to help him.”

  “Now, sweetheart,” Brandon said. “I’ve got to go out to Palmerola, load up all that stuff for Salvador. You don’t want to hang around for that, do you?”

  “Yes I do,” Holly said to her plate in a particularly little voice.

  “Well, I can go with you,” Caitlin said.

  “No you can’t,” Holly said.

  Caitlin turned to her. “Enough,” she said. “First you drag me to this terrible place, then you say I can’t even come with you this afternoon.”

  “You can’t,” Holly said. “They won’t let you. Besides, I didn’t drag you anywhere. You invited yourself.”

  “I beg your pardon,” Caitlin said.

  “I’m sorry,” Holly said. “I’m sorry.”

  “Well,” Caitlin said. “I certainly did not invite myself.”

  “Well, you did,” Holly said, “you certainly did. And now you’re already complaining again, just like you always do. Just like you’re some princess and I’m something that washed up one day on your—”

  “Do we have to—” Caitlin said.

  “You act like I come from a pigsty. You act like Daddy and I are I don’t know whats. You’re ashamed of me. Look—you can hardly even look at me.”

  “How can you say that! Do you think I would have stayed with your father for fifteen minutes if it hadn’t been for you? If it weren’t for you I wouldn’t be able to recognize your father in a police lineup.”

  “That’s exactly what I—”

  “All right,” Caitlin said. “If you don’t want me here, I’ll leave.”

  “So, good!” Holly said. “Leave! You think you can just show up somewhere and be all charming and—and lovely, and then whatever you’ve done won’t matter, and someone will bail you out of whatever stupid slimehole you’ve fallen into. You think you can just walk away from anything and then by the time you turn around again everything will be just the way you want it to be. It makes me just want to throw up!”

  “Honey?” Brandon said softly. “Sweetheart? We’re in a restaurant.” He turned to Caitlin. “She’s overexcited.”

  “I can see that, Brandon,” Caitlin said. “I’m her mother.”

  Brandon stood. “I’m just going to take her away now, and we’ll give you a call later when we’re feeling better.”

  “That’s what you think,” Holly said furiously. She stormed out of the room while Brandon held out his hand to Caitlin.

  “Pleasure to meet you, ma’am,” he said with opaque calm.

  Jesus, Caitlin thought. How idiotic. Holly would be sorry later—she always was. But in the meantime…Oh, well. Out for adventures. She sighed and looked at the swamp on her plate; how on earth had the others managed to eat these miserable, depressing eggs?

  The hilly streets were crowded. Puffs of dust and low, slowly roiling clouds veiled the chalky buildings and churches, and groups of black-haired schoolchildren in blue uniforms flowed around Caitlin, as yielding as a haze of gnats. Men and women passed with soft, despondent expressions; at first, Caitlin smiled cheerfully at them, but the smiles they returned were conciliatory and apologetic, as though hers were something to be evaded, or endured.

  Those shorn boys on
the plane had been soldiers, of course, Caitlin thought. But who were all these other Americans? Like the burly, red-faced boy who was drinking a beer as he walked. His bright red T-shirt came toward her. “FEED THE HOMELESS TO THE HUNGRY” it said. “Gramma’s looking good,” the boy himself said and belched into her ear as he lurched lightly against her.

  She steadied herself at a low wall and rubbed her ankle, fuming. When she looked up she saw that she was in a stone plaza, where a knot of ragged people was forming around something. She joined the grimy crowd and saw at its center a man sitting on a blanket, surrounded by small heaps of dried plants, a large trunk, and jars of smoky liquid, inside of which indistinct shapes floated. Of course, Caitlin couldn’t understand what he was saying, but his voice rose and fell, full of crescendos and exquisitely disturbing pauses, and his eyes glittered with irony as he gathered up all the vitality that had dissipated from his dusty audience and their torpor burned off in the air crackling around him.

  The women in the crowd giggled and tilted their heads against one another’s shoulders; the men squirmed and smiled sheepishly. Suddenly the man on the blanket went still. He stared, then lifted his arms high and plunged them into the trunk, from which he raised, as the women screamed and scattered, a great snake that seethed luxuriantly in his hands. Caitlin found herself clinging to a barefoot woman, who smiled to excuse herself, and then, as the crowd drew together again, the man on the blanket placed the twisting snake around his shoulders and reached into the trunk for a second time.

  This time what he drew forth was a small white waxy-looking block. The crowd peered and craned. The man looked sternly back and silence fell. He passed his hand across the block, and as the crowd sighed like a flock of doves rising from a tree, the block began to foam.

  In an instant the onlookers were rushing forward, drawing from their pockets bills as worn and dried out as they themselves were, which the man on the blanket collected, passing out bars of soap in a blur of speed.