Roger had waxy, poreless skin, as if he’d spent years packed in a box, and his blue eyes shone with joyous, childlike gluttony, lighting now on booty, now on tribute.
It had come to him, he told her, that it was time to make some changes. He was living in the city—toiling, as he put it, in the engine rooms of finance, but one day not long ago his company had vanished, along with so many others, in a little puff of dirty smoke. What was he to do? His portfolio had been laid waste. So, the point was, he could scrounge for something else, but it had occurred to him, why not just pull up stakes and live in some reasonably gratifying way? There wasn’t any money to speak of out there these days, anyhow.
Money to speak of. A different kind of money than the money her mother had counted out for groceries.
So why not look at this period of being broke as an opportunity, he was saying, that might not come again. Because this was, he’d informed her, one’s life.
The waiter poured a little wine into Roger’s glass. How is that, sir? the waiter said.
Fine, Roger said, very good. He beamed as the waiter poured out a full glass for Kristina.
Thanks, Artie, she said, and Artie had bowed.
You know everyone! Roger observed.
Yeah, well, she knew Artie, unfortunately. A tiny chapter her history would have been better off without.
What is it? Roger asked. He’d smiled quizzically and taken her hand. What are you thinking?
She’d looked at him, smiled back, and withdrawn her hand.
Roger’s marriage, for better or worse, had come to its natural end, he was saying. And while he looked for the occasion to make that clear, in a sensitive manner, to his wife, he was scouting out arenas in which to mine his stifled and neglected capacities.
As he talked, he gazed at her raptly, as though she were a mirror. When he reached for his wallet, to show her pictures of his children, she withdrew her hand from his again, and concentrated on drinking the very good wine. By the time they had polished off nearly two bottles and Roger was willing to throw in the towel, The Mill Wheel had almost emptied out, and Artie was lounging at the bar, staring at her evilly.
After that evening, she turned down dinner invitations, and eventually she started wearing a ring. At some point it came to her attention that Roger had indeed moved to town. In fact, he was increasingly to be seen in the afternoons hanging out at one of the bars or another, brainstorming his next move in life with the help of the bartenders.
The brilliant autumn days graded into a dazzling, glassy winter with skies like prisms, and then spring drifted down, as soft as pale linen. She painted her room a deep, mysterious blue.
Where on earth was she going to go if Nonie and Munsen had this baby they kept talking about?
She kept seeing women around her age, or anyway not much older, coming into town in their beat-up cars or pickups, to stock up. They looked sunburned and hardy and ready for the next thing, as if they were climbing out of water after a swim. Big, friendly dogs frisked around them.
Where could they be coming from? From out in the country, of course—way out, from the wild, ramshackle farms, where the weeds shot up and burst into sizzling flowers.
The kitchen is freezing. She goes into the bedroom and selects a worn chenille robe from Alma’s closet. Alma’s clock, with the big, reproving green numbers, says ten thirty.
So, where is Alma? Way back, when they were growing up almost next door to each other in the projects, and their mothers let Alma exercise her fierce affections on the little girl she knew to be her half-sister, Alma took care of her while their mothers worked.
And young as Kristina was, Alma confided in her. Back then, Kristina felt Alma’s suffering over boys like the imprint of a slap on her own skin. Evidently things haven’t changed much for Alma, and it’s saddening now to picture Alma’s history with Gerry: the big guy on the next bar stool, a few annihilating hours of alcohol, a messy, urgent interval at his place or hers, the sequence recapitulated now and again—an uneasy companionability hemmed about with recriminations and contingencies…
In her peripheral vision, Eli appears.
It was busy, and she didn’t get a good look at him right away, but even at the other end of the room, sitting and talking to Frank, he was conspicuous, as if he were surrounded by his own splendid night.
Yes. She’d felt the active density right away, the gravitational pull.
It must have been several weeks later that he was there again with Frank. And when Frank got up to strut, and sniff around for mistakes, Eli looked right at her over Frank’s shoulder and smiled—not the usual sort of stranger’s smile, like a fence marking a divide. Not a stranger’s smile at all.
It was a Friday night; the tourists started to pour in, and when she had a chance to peek back at him he was gone. He didn’t reappear.
Then one night she glanced up from the table where she was taking an order and he was sitting at the bar. A little shock rippled through her. Evidently she’d been waiting.
He was looking for Frank again of course, but, as she explained, it was Frank’s night off. Too bad you didn’t call first, she said.
No phone, he told her, lightly.
No phone. Okay, but how did he find people when he wanted to?
Finding people is easy, he’d said; it’s not getting found that’s hard.
It was a slow evening, and early. They stood side by side at the bar. She could feel his gaze; she let herself float on it. How long had he and Frank been friends, she’d asked.
He’d seemed amused. Strictly business, he said. And what about her? Who was she? Where was she from?
As she spoke, he looked at her consideringly, and sorrow rose up, closing over her. How little she had to show for her eighteen years on the planet! In an hour or so the room would be filled with frenetic diners, killing time until it killed them. They might as well be shot and stuffed themselves.
I don’t know about this town, though, she’d said. I’m starting to feel like I’m asleep.
So, maybe you need your sleep, he said. This isn’t a bad place for a nap. Why not nap? Soon you’ll be refreshed and ready to move on out.
She took to sitting at her window. Haze covered the hills in the distance; the sky had become opaque, and close. Where had that real day gone?
Sometimes after she finished delivering the orders in Nonie’s old car she’d just drive around, down the small highways to the shady dirt roads. Sometimes she thought she’d caught a glimpse of Eli in town, just rounding a corner, disappearing through a doorway; she wasn’t well, she thought—it seemed that maybe she never had been.
Maybe I’ll try to find myself a place out in the country, she told Nonie, and get my own car.
That would be great, Nonie said. I’ll help you look, if you want.
Wouldn’t you even miss me? she’d said.
Of course, Nonie said. But you wouldn’t be far. You’d come see us all the time.
And I’d keep helping you, she’d said.
And you’d keep helping me, Nonie said.
She can still see in perfect detail Zoe’s face as she saw it in the The White Rabbit, for the first and only time. Truly she could only have glimpsed it—in profile as Zoe and Eli left, or in the mirror over the bar—but she might as well have scrutinized it for hours. It’s almost as if she had been inside Zoe, looking into that mirror over the bar herself, seeing herself in the perfect dark skin, the perfect head, her hair almost shorn. She can feel Zoe’s delicate body working as if it were her own, and she can feel the weight of the sleeping baby strapped to Zoe’s back.
The lovely face with its long, wide-set eyes floats in Alma’s plastic-covered window now, unsmiling, distant.
Eli had waved as he and Zoe left, but it was as if she was watching him from behind dark glass; she didn’t wave back, or smile.
And Zoe appeared not to have seen her. The fact is, Zoe appeared not to see anything at all; Zoe had looked unearthly and singular, as if she
were a blind woman.
Nonie was five months pregnant by the time she and Munsen told Kristina. She was superstitious, she said, and she’d had trouble before. She chuckled and patted her stomach. But this is getting pretty obvious, she said. I figured you were just being polite.
For months Munsen and Nonie had been aware there was a baby in the house.
Oh, her blue room! It had been pretty poor comfort that day.
Of course, it hadn’t really been her room for the five previous months.
And the lady at the real estate office! Irritably raking back the streaky hair, the rectangular glasses in their thin frames, the expectant expression that went blank when Kristina spoke, or changed to a hurried smile…
A little less than fifteen hundred dollars! Every penny she’d saved. Not quite enough, was it, even for some crumbling hut out there, all made out of candy.
While Nonie baked rolls and Munsen sanded down to satin the cradle he’d built for the invisible baby, she’d flipped through Munsen’s atlas. Chicago, Maine, Seattle, Atlanta—or why not go to one of those places really far away, where people spoke languages she couldn’t understand at all? Because that was the point—this direction or that—apparently it didn’t matter where she went.
The end of summer was already sweeping through town, hectic with color and heat, as if it were making a desperate stand against the darkness and cold ahead. Nearly a year had passed.
He was watching her as she walked right by him at the bar. Hey, he said, and held his hand out. No handshakes? No greetings, no how are yous, none of the customary effusions?
She had blushed deeply; she shook her hair back. All right, she said, greetings.
She remembers standing there, waiting for the blush to calm while he stretched lazily.
Well, since you ask, he’d said, here’s the data. A lot of travel, recently, a lot of work. And my girlfriend is gone.
It was as if there were other words inside those, in the way there are with jokes. That’s too bad, she said.
Why, exactly? he said, and the mortifying blush flared again.
To tell you the truth, he was saying, it was obvious almost from the beginning that there were going to be problems.
That woman had looked like someone with problems, she remembers having thought; that woman in the mirror looked like she was drifting there between the land of the living and the land of the dead.
And what was she up to herself these days, he’d wanted to know.
She took a deep breath to establish some poise in her thoughts. Since you ask, she said, I think nap time is just about up for me.
That very night, when she got back after work, he was there in the kitchen. He and Munsen were drinking beer, and he must have just finished saying something that made Nonie and Munsen laugh. She’d stood in the doorway, silenced.
There she is, Nonie said. How come you never brought this guy around? He’s okay.
Guess I don’t need to introduce anyone, she’d said.
Nonie and Munsen were sitting at the table, but he was lounging against the wall, looking at her, not quite smiling. It seemed I might not have a whole lot of time, he said. So I thought I’d drop on by to ask for your hand.
He waited for her to approach. She couldn’t feel herself moving. She laughed a little, breathlessly, as he removed her ring, looking at her. Dollar store, she said, and he dropped it into the ashtray on the kitchen table.
Wow! Munsen said. Okay!
There’s some stuff I have to deal with tonight, Eli said. Sit tight. I’ll be back in for you at noon.
Roger was already at the bar of The White Rabbit when she went in to leave a note for Frank the next morning. His arm was around one of the new waitresses. His wife and kids were where by then, she wondered. Probably living in his abandoned SUV on just the same street where she and Alma grew up, all those years ago. Hey, she’d said. Hey, he said cheerfully. Actually, he hadn’t seemed to quite remember who she was.
Wear something pretty, Eli had said the night before as he left, and so she was wearing her favorite dress, with its little straps and bare back. Her hair was pinned up. He swung her satchel into the back of the truck and then they climbed in.
Beyond the windshield, the hills had an arresting, detailed look. Red and gold were beginning to edge into the leaves. The hills were like inverted bowls or gentle cones, covered with trees. She had the impression that she could see each and every tree. The trees, like the hills, were shaped like gentle cones or inverted bowls. Would you look at that, she said.
Huh, he said, that’s right. A nice little volumetric exercise.
He reached over and unpinned her hair.
This is a very crazy thing to do, she said.
Which is crazier? he said. This, or not this?
She must have been smiling, because he’d laughed. What a skeptic, he’d said. So, it’s a risk, yes? Okay, but a risk of what? Look, here’s the alternative, we meet, we like each other, we say hello, we say goodbye. Now there’s an actual risk. That’s pure recklessness. We’re scared—is that so bad? Because when you’re scared, you can be pretty sure you’re on to something.
She remembers a sudden, panicked sensation that something was wrong, and then all her relief because it was only the ring—she wasn’t wearing her dime store ring.
It’s pretty clear, he was saying, the things people know about each other in an instant are the important things. But all right, let’s say the important things aren’t everything. Let’s say the unimportant things count, too—even a lot. The point is, though, we can spend as long as we like learning those unimportant things about each other. We can spend years, if we want, or we can spend a few hours. If you want, I can bring you back here tomorrow. We can say goodbye now, if you want.
They watched each other, smiling faintly. The silence raced through her over and over.
Say the word, he’d told her, and you’re back where you were.
Past the gorge, where she went to swim sometimes with Nonie and Munsen, past the old foundry, past the quarry, the hills flowing around them, mile after mile, so little traffic on the highway, the sweet air pouring by and the sun ringing through the sky like trumpets. Then they were in the woods, among the woven streamers of sunlight and shadow. The dirt road was studded with rocks, and grooved, tossing her around as if she were on the high seas.
None of her drives in Nonie’s car had taken her in that direction, or nearly that far. There were no other people to be seen. Every leaf and twig signified, like a sound, or a letter of the alphabet.
By the way, she said, how did you know where to look for me last night?
Hey, he said. In a town that size?
Light brimmed and quivered through the leaves in trembling drops. All around was a faint, high, glittering sound. The cabin was a maze of light and shadow—all logs, with polished plank floors, and porches. And with the attic and lofts and little ladders and stairs, you hardly knew whether you were inside or up in a tree house.
There was running water, and there was even electricity, which he used mainly for the washing machine and the big freezer at the back. He brought her out past a group of sheds to the vegetable garden he’d been clearing and tending, and to the shiny little creek. If you walked into the woods, within just a couple of minutes you couldn’t even see the cabin. When the sun began to set they came back, and he showed her how to light the kerosene lanterns and the temperamental little dragon of a stove.
There was a lot of game in the freezer, Eli said; hunters often gave him things. But he’d kept it simple tonight—for all he knew, she might be the fainthearted sort.
He had opened a bottle of rich red wine and they ate wonderful noodles, with mushrooms from the woods and herbs, and a salad from the garden. He watched, with evident satisfaction, her astonishment at the bright, living flavors.
You have to live like this to taste anything like this, he said. Streamline yourself. Clear away the junk. Prepare for an encounter.
; But anyhow, she’d said, and in the stillness she’d felt like a dancer, balancing—I’m not fainthearted.
How on earth was she accounting in those first hours, she wonders now, for the baby she had seen at the bar with Eli?
Well, if she’d thought of too many questions out front, she’d probably still be rotting away in that little town, living in somebody’s spare room. She’d been in no position at that moment to be thinking of the sort of questions whose answers are, Go back to sleep.
They were finishing off the bottle of wine when he explained that his partner Hollis and Hollis’s girlfriend, Liz, were taking care of Noah right now, as they did from time to time. It was all kind of improvisational, not ideal, but Zoe had been erratic and moody, so anyhow it was an improvement over that situation.
He rested his hand on her neck, and stars shot from it. If it had been up to her, the dishes would have stayed in the sink till morning—till winter. But Eli just held her against him for a blinding moment. Here’s some of that new stuff to learn about me, he said. I am very, very disciplined.
And what had she been dreaming about that first morning? She was hidden behind something. Something was about to happen to someone very far away, who was her. There were showers of burning debris. The noise that woke her came into the dream as an alarm, she thinks, but it all dissolved like a screen over the morning light, and there was Eli lying next to her, his eyes still closed, shadows of leaves moving across him like a rich, patterned cloak.
A mechanical growl was pushing through the racket of birds and leaves. She peered out and a mottled green truck came into view. The sun must have been up for some time—it was so bright! The door of the truck slammed, and Eli groaned. Hollis, he said, and opened his eyes.
She wrapped herself around him, but he kissed her, untangled himself, and drew his jeans on. There were dogs barking. Powder! T-bone! someone yelled. Down!
The Collected Stories of Deborah Eisenberg Page 81