The Collected Stories of Deborah Eisenberg

by Deborah Eisenberg

  He led her rapidly through the churches, the ex-convent, the now-public villas, bounding up and down the steep town steps and cobbled streets, providing scholarly commentary. She was worse, she thought, than her students—than the tourists from the buses! Who were indeed standing around town in bewildered-looking herds, uneasily gripping their cameras as though they were passports.

  “Good—” Harry said, striding through the garden leading to the little museum. “—still open!” His gesture, which swept the paintings, the small mounted sculptures, was proprietary.

  He was looking at a lump of stone in a glass case. No, a head; a stone coronet sat on heavy twists of stone hair over a dreaming stone face. A real girl must have modeled for it, Kate thought—an actual princess, or a young queen.

  Or possibly some girl right off the streets for whom the artist had conceived a passion. Had she lived to be old? It was hard to imagine this girl old. Trouble, she looked like; pure trouble. A provocative reserve emanated from the faint stone smile, sending a hiss of fire through the stone-cooled air. Trouble even now, Kate thought. This girl had seen to it that the sculptor’s obsession would be inflicted on whoever saw her for all time to come.

  Kate glanced at Harry for a translation of the bit of text on the glass case, but he had turned away, to an elaborate marble, whose racing lines were taking a moment to resolve in front of her. A faun, or possibly a satyr, something with furry haunches and little hooves and horns had seized a young woman from behind. Her head was arched way back against him and her long hair whipped around her face, which was slightly contorted. Her eyes were almost closed. One of the creature’s hands was splayed out between the girl’s sharp pelvic bones, and the other pinned her own hand to one of her adolescent breasts. Her free arm reached out, with what intent it was impossible to guess—it had broken off at the elbow. Kate stumbled slightly on an uneven stone underfoot. “Goodness me,” she said.

  “Yes, marvelous—” Harry glanced at his watch. “Second century after Christ, probably a copy of a Greek piece. Are we through here? The church I particularly want you to see closes in minutes.”

  In the lobby, the delicate afternoon had given way to a rich, deep twinkling. More people had arrived; the bellboys, in their red and gold, were loading huge leather cases onto trolleys. The tapping of high heels echoed faintly from the corridors. “Dinner at eight-thirty?” Harry said. “By the way, how did you find your room—satisfactory?”

  “Glorious,” Kate said. “It’s…glorious…”

  “Glorious.” He smiled at her and briefly her arms and legs seemed to need rearrangement; what did one generally do with them? “Well, very good then. We’ll have a bit of a rest, yes? And meet in the bar.”

  Dinner at eight-thirty. Once again, they’d be sitting at a table together. But what had she imagined was going to happen? They could hardly have dinner separately.

  She found her room waiting; the crisp linen had been turned down, mysteriously, the heavy shutters drawn. She was being attended to, as if she—of all people, she thought—had come upon the palace where the poor Beast waited for his release. She sat for a while on the balcony, watching ribbons of mist twine below her through the trees and listening to distant bells from hidden fields and towns. Grass, petal, wave, stone turned to velvet—indistinct glowing patches—as veil on veil of twilight dropped over them.

  A jar of aromatic bath salts had been provided. She poured them like a libation under the faucet—why not? They represented her salary—and took a long soak, moving from time to time to solicit the water’s musical response.

  One assumed there was such a thing as chance; when one was young, one assumed that the way one’s life was to express itself was one of many possible ways, and later, one assumed that this had been true.

  Of course, even if she hadn’t married Baker, she’d never have been living like this. She’d never have been living like Giovanna, casually surrounded by silk-covered furniture and lovely, old pieces of glass and silver, entertaining herself in her spare time with one admirer or another. Those things were probably not within the compass of her particular possibilities.

  But surely it was within that compass—surely, with one degree’s alteration here or there—that she and Baker would not have married. And if they had not, if they hadn’t had children, one thing was certain—that Baker would now mean no more to her than any young man she might have met in the course of her school duties; she’d have a harmless memory of a nice young man.

  And from all the years with him? You couldn’t feel love once it was gone. What you could feel for a long time was the sorrow of its fading, like the burning afterimage of a setting sun. And then that was gone, too. What she would remember for the rest of her life was the fact, at least, of the shocking pain they’d been forced to inflict on one another. Eventually when they’d touched, it was like touching a wound.

  When both the children had left for school, she’d expected a long period of lonely freedom, an expansion. But now that Baker was sick, Blair and Brice hovered closely, as if it were she who needed consolation, not they. Blair asked questions continuously. Why did you and Dad…How did you feel when…

  They’d been over and over it all from the children’s adolescence on. “I’ve told you what I can,” Kate said. “I’m sorry. It was moving very fast back then.”

  But at the time it hadn’t felt fast. There were long days of paralysis, sleepless nights. How could so much anguish have been expended on something that now seemed so remote?

  “What can I say to you?” she told Blair. “I had a reasonably civil relationship with my parents, but I never understood them. I don’t suppose their life together was entirely without chaos and misery, but I have no idea what went on between them. Or within either of them, actually. Of course you don’t understand us. No one has ever understood their parents. And what, for that matter, do I know about you?”

  Blair stared at Kate, tears spilling up into her eyes. “You knew it was me from the back that time, going by in Jeffrey’s car at about eighty, even though I was supposedly at Jennifer’s!”

  Kate sighed. “That’s different,” she’d said.

  She wrapped herself in a vast, soft towel and contemplated her clothing. A faint breeze came through the French doors and the black dress swayed slightly on its hanger.

  It was a dress that she’d recklessly allowed Blair to talk her into buying from a terrifying shop in Chicago. That evening she’d thought of its cost and actually covered her face in embarrassment—of course she’d return it. But then, the sight of it swathed in its tissue paper…

  It was a little daring, that dress. Nonetheless, she’d gone out in it several times, before Rowan came to his senses and married an infant.

  She reached over to the hanger. It was now or never. She slipped the dress over her head and breathed in; the zipper climbed, cinching her tightly. She turned to challenge the mirror: now or never.

  All right, then—never, the mirror said, coolly. And what did she think this was—a date?

  The bar was almost filled. The tender glimmer from candles and lamps embraced the encampments of guests; bright little clusters of laughter bloomed here and there amid clinking glass and conversation. Harry was sitting at the far end of the room, his back to her.

  Kate’s hands went cold. He was with people. A family, it seemed. A pretty girl, just a little older, Kate judged, than her students, was stretched out on a recamier, in a display of intense boredom. The father was a great, blocky affair, wearing a blazer with gold buttons, and a little boy in an identical blazer perched stiffly on a settee.

  The woman next to the boy leaned toward Harry, her red-nailed fingers playing with a large solitaire at her throat. “Really!” Kate heard her exclaim, and she laughed gaily. Her toenails were the fevered red of her fingernails and her lipstick. Her little white suit was as tense as an origami construction, but a snippet of lace peeked out aggressively from under the jacket.

  Harry was gesticulat
ing; his voice came into focus: “…insisted, but insisted—” he was saying, “—that I jump on the Concorde. What could I do? A call from Dubzhinski. In New York I literally scampered to make my connection. I fell off the plane in Los Angeles, and was at the Polo Lounge in seconds. I took her out of my case, unwrapped her, and set her down in front of us on the bar. There she was, with her little chin thrust forward and her hands clasped behind her back, and those astonishing legs. Dubzhinski was trembling. I could actually hear that tiny, hard heart of his. It was hammering away like a cash register at Christmastime. He was paralyzed, he stared, and then he reached out and upended her to look under her tutu. ‘Go ahead,’ I said, ‘we can authenticate her right here.’ And the next—”

  The wife was glancing sidelong at Kate with slight alarm, as though Kate might be hoping to sell them pencils. Harry swiveled in his chair, looked at her blankly, then sprang to his feet. “My dear!” he said. “Ah, we’re a chair short! What shall, what shall, what shall we do, eh?”

  For a moment everyone except the girl was standing and bobbing about and pushing one another toward seats. “Oh,” Kate began. “Well, I could just—” Just what? But then a murmuring waiter in a white coat was there with a smile of compassion for her that pierced her like a bayonet.

  Harry and the Reitzes had met several years before, in Paris, it was explained, at the home of a mutual friend, about whom they’d just been reminiscing.

  “Oh, Franz and I couldn’t really claim that M. Dubzhinski is a friend. We just happened to be with the LaRues. But you know—” Mrs. Reitz addressed Kate “—that house is even more gorgeous than in the pictures.” She turned back to Harry, but her perfume continued to loiter thuggishly around Kate. “I know there are people who say M. Dubzhinski is…Well. But he was charming to me that time. Simply charming.”

  “‘Charming…’” Mr. Reitz tried out the word and smiled pityingly. “I wouldn’t entirely agree. But harmless enough at bottom. Colorful, as the expression goes. I believe it was one of your countrymen—” he nodded at Kate “—who put it so well: I’ve never met a man I didn’t like.”

  The girl sat up slowly, fluffing her long hair back. “Really?” she glanced at him. “I have.”

  Mrs. Reitz’s eyes were not quite closed. Her face was more unresponsive than if she hadn’t heard at all. But Mr. Reitz was speaking to Kate. “My wife, too, is American.”

  Was the girl’s arrogance affected, or was it entirely real? As cocky as Kate’s students could be, as irritating, they were actually, for all their show, quite humble. Of course, Kate had never encountered a child as privileged as this girl, with this hard candy gloss…“Texas,” Mrs. Reitz was saying, leaning over to touch Kate’s wrist, her own flashing and clanging with jewelry. “But I guess you heard that, right off! I wouldn’t change Zurich for anything, but I get homesick. I miss Los Angeles. I miss Dallas. I miss New York.”

  “I’m from Cincinnati,” Kate said.

  “Oh.” Mrs. Reitz’s smile was puzzled. “I see.”

  “I’m really just visiting,” Kate said.

  “Ah,” Mrs. Reitz said archly.

  “No,” Kate said. “A friend in Rome.”

  “A mutual friend,” Harry said fussily, as he snagged a waiter. “Champagne? Champagne, my dear?” he asked Kate and then the girl, who had been drinking nothing.

  “Good. And another round for the rest of us, thank you. Yes, this kind lady has been good enough to accompany me thus far and have a little look at the area. Tomorrow she returns, I believe, do you not?”

  “How nice,” Mrs. Reitz said. Her gaze swept Kate’s flowered dress, her face, her cardigan, and lapsed from Kate like a cat’s.

  “We’re going up to Rome ourselves tomorrow or Sunday,” Mr. Reitz said.

  “We’re doing the palaces on the kids’ spring break,” Mrs. Reitz explained.

  “The question is,” Mr. Reitz said, “which day exactly will we travel? We’re told that the traffic is quite terrible on Saturday. But also we’re told that the traffic is quite terrible on Sunday.”

  “That is true,” Harry said. He looked at one child, then the other. “Are you glad to be on holiday?”

  The boy nodded vigorously. “Yes, thank you.”

  “And you?” Harry asked.

  The girl, who was reclining again, opened her eyes and looked steadily at him. “Not madly.” She closed her eyes again and crossed her arms over her chest, as though she were sunbathing, or dying.

  “Sit up, sweetheart,” Mrs. Reitz murmured. “Well!” she said, casting a misty look at the room in general. “At least we’ve been lucky with the weather. They said it’s been raining and raining and raining,” she explained to Kate. “I was afraid it was going to rain today.”

  “But it didn’t,” Mr. Reitz said.

  “No,” Mrs. Reitz agreed. “It didn’t.”

  “We have good luck with the weather,” Mr. Reitz said, “but bad luck with the traffic. It took us all day to get here. We expected to arrive at three o’clock. But we arrived almost at seven.”

  The girl emitted a small sigh, which floated down among them like a feather.

  “Now, you’ve determined it’s best to drive up tomorrow…” Mrs. Reitz furrowed deferentially at Kate, as though Kate were a senior scholar of traffic.

  “I’ll be taking the train,” Kate said.

  “The train!” Mrs. Reitz said. “What a marvelous—”

  “I want to take the train,” the little boy said mournfully. “I wanted to take the train,” he explained to Kate. “But we can’t because of the Porsche.”

  “That’s the problem, sweetie,” Mrs. Reitz said absently, reaching over to a small silver bowl of mixed nuts, which Harry was nervously plundering. “Excuse me!” he said, retracting his hand as though it had been bitten.

  “I am so sorry!” Mrs. Reitz exclaimed. “Oh, I am simply starving.”

  “I can imagine,” Harry said distractedly.

  “And I suppose spring holidays are the reason for all this damned, if you’ll pardon me, traffic,” Mr. Reitz said. “Yes, the only occasions on which one has the opportunity to travel with one’s family, others are traveling with theirs. What a paradox!”

  The boy’s straw slurped among the ice at the bottom of his drink.

  “Darling,” Mrs. Reitz said. “Your father was merely making an observation.”

  The boy blushed red. “My baby,” Mrs. Reitz said. She drew him to her and stroked his silky hair, smiling first at her husband, then at Harry. “You know, I absolutely adore this place. It’s so romantic. Don’t you just keep imagining all the things that must have gone on in these rooms? Oh, my. For hundreds of years!” The boy sat stock still until his mother released him, recrossing her legs and primly readjusting the hem of her little skirt.

  “Good heavens—” Harry glanced at his watch “—they’ll have been waiting with our table! I do wish we could ask you to join us, but, that is, they’re very strict. Please excuse us.”

  “What an ordeal!” he said to Kate as they were seated. “How horrible! Was I terribly rude? I suppose I should have invited them to dine with us. And why not? Would it be possible for them to bore us any more than they already have? But yes, on reflection, yes. I feel I might still recover.”

  The dining room was an aerie, a bower, hung with a playful lattice of garlands. Its white tile floors were adorned with painted baskets of fruit, and there were real ones scattered here and there on stands. But even as the waiters glided by with trays of glossy roasted vegetables and platters of fish, even while Harry took it upon himself to order for her, knowledgeably and solicitously, Kate felt tainted. Despite the room’s conceit that eating was a pastime for elves and fairies, Mrs. Reitz’s carnality had disclosed the truth: this aggregation of hairy vertebrates, scrubbed, scented, prancing about on hind legs, was ruthlessly bent on physical gratifications—tactile, visual, gustatory, genital…The candles! The flowers! A trough providing mass feedings for naked guests would be less po
rnographic.

  The Reitzes were being led to their own table. Mrs. Reitz waggled one set of fingers in their direction, holding her jacket closed beneath her collarbones with the other, as if an enormous wind were about to whip it open, exposing her.

  “One encounters these terrible people wherever one goes,” Harry said. “They all know me—it’s the unfortunate side of my work, if I can use such an elevated term for, actually, my little hobby…They’re all clients, or friends of clients. Clients of clients…”

  Despite Mrs. Reitz’s speedy (and uncalled for!) assessment of Kate as out of the running, Kate thought, Mrs. Reitz was probably not much younger, really. The bouncing gold hair, the vivacity, the strained skin suggested it…

  All those years ago, when she’d finally confessed to her mother about Baker and Norman, Kate had waited quietly through her mother’s initial monologue. “Don’t worry,” her mother said grimly. “I won’t say I told you so.”

  In fact, she never had told Kate so. On the contrary, she’d been elated by Baker’s family, his appearance, his education, his law firm…“I can’t say I’m overly surprised about…this other person, but does he have to move out? Why can’t people of your generation set aside your personal appetites for one instant? The children are going to be confused enough as it is! Oh, I simply can’t believe he’s leaving you for—for—for an electrician! Well, but I’m sure he’ll continue to support you.”

  Kate had smiled faintly. “You are? He’s going into public-interest law.”

  “My God, my God!” her mother cried. “Oh, I suppose I should feel compassion for him. He was always so weak, so lost. But why did he have to marry you? Why did he feel he had the right to ruin your life while he was working things out for himself? Well, and yet I can understand it. I suppose he thought you could help him. You were always such a sweet girl. And not, if you don’t mind my saying so, very threatening, sexually.”

  “And the worst thing,” Harry was saying, “is that they all seem to want something from me. I don’t know what! Perhaps they imagine I’ll be able to pick up some piece for a song, something to transform a salon from the ordinarily to the spectacularly vulgar. Some great, blowsy, romping nymph with an enormous behind…”