Near Canaan

by Liese O'Halloran Schwarz

  “‘Doctor, I eat prunes three times a day,’” he warbled suddenly, in a fair imitation of Miss Pringle’s quavery voice. “And that laugh,” he went on. “I heard that she was kidnapped and brought up by a tribe of wild accordions.” He laughed Miss Pringle’s shuddering wheeze.

  “Oh, oh,” said Bella Long, who taught Health. “I’m going to pee my pants.” She squeezed her false eyelashes together and opened her wet mouth wide in laughter. Slut, thought Joan, startling herself.

  “What’s wrong with our dear Mrs. Corbin?” asked Alden, suddenly.

  “Nothing,” she said, taken aback.

  “But you’re not laughing,” he said. “You think I’m terrible, don’t you?”

  “No,” she said, feeling uncomfortable, the eyes of the others on her, mouths parted, waiting to laugh again.

  “No what?” teased Alden.

  “No, I don’t think you’re terrible,” she said.

  “Yes, you do,” he said, falling to his knees, screwing up his face in mock agony. She could smell the liquor on him now, pulsing from him in clean, aromatic waves, innocent as mouthwash. “I am terrible,” he wailed, grasping her calves. “Forgive me.”

  “Let go,” she said.

  “Not until you forgive me,” he insisted.

  “What do you want?” she asked.

  “Tell me I’m not terrible,” he said, instantly, releasing her and leaning back on his knees, smiling up into her face.

  She looked down at him, at where he knelt in his chalky trousers on the floor, at his hands clasped together under his chin.

  “You’re not terrible,” she said, slowly. “You’re merely thoughtless.”

  His face changed, and the circle around the two of them went poisonously calm. The whole room was watching them, now; even the dancers were still while Ben changed the record.

  “You’ve never thought about what it might be like to be plain and unwanted,” Joan went on, in a kind of robotic voice. “Or about anything except what’s right in front of you. You’ve never thought about anything at all.”

  Alden’s eyes were wide and serious, listening.

  “A handsome face is nothing to be proud of,” said Joan, severely. “If the head it’s on is empty.”

  Just then, Miss Pringle reentered the room. She had evidently taken advantage of her trip to the restroom to groom herself. She had touched up her lipstick; now it shone wetly from her face like a cut strawberry set in a bowl of oatmeal. She had combed her hair; the dry wisps had been tucked back into place and trapped anew with bobby pins, and her temples gleamed. She crept into the room, imagining herself unnoticed, but as the door closed behind her she looked around, in the kind of deadly hush which could not fail to tell her she’d been discussed in her absence. Her face went slowly and painfully pink, and she looked beseechingly to the corner where Joan had intended to wait for her.

  From the opposite corner, Joan watched Miss Pringle’s face fall at the sight of the empty chairs. Miss Pringle turned her head then, searching the room, and saw her. Her little eyes took in everything: Joan’s guilty posture, and the attractive man at her feet; the crowd around them, which was beginning to break into giggles again. Her gaze locked Joan’s for a moment, and then slid away. Her pinkness went to pallor, and she stiffened her spine. Joan watched her march deliberately and alone through the stock-still dancers, past the single knot of staring secretaries, all the way to the punch bowl, where she helped herself to a cup of lemonade. She bore it alone to the empty chairs, subsided into one of them, and began to sip, holding her little finger out.

  “Wait,” said Alden, as Joan left the room.

  In the women’s room, she sat in one of the stalls for fully five minutes. Although she had no real need to urinate, she forced herself to do so, and afterward sat there with her hands on her knees, feeling the rush of air beneath her from the flushing mechanism. Sluggishly, she stood up and carefully adjusted her stockings and rearranged her skirt and blouse, smoothing them down.

  As she stepped out to the row of sinks, the door opened, and Alden Wood slipped in, a finger at his lips.

  “Don’t scream,” he said. “Anybody else in here?”

  She shook her head.

  “You’re not supposed to be in here,” she said, stupidly, as he closed the door behind him.

  “I know,” he said, with a wicked smile.

  “Still playing the fool?” she said, angrily, moving to go past him.

  “I wanted to talk to you,” he said, touching her arm.

  Although he had not grabbed her, or restrained her in any way, she stopped short, exactly as though he had.

  “What is it?” she asked.

  “I wanted to apologize,” he said. “You were right in there. I do play the fool.” He looked at her sadly. “I don’t know any other way to be. I wish I did. I wish I had your courage.” His eyes wavered away, and then back. “Sometimes I hate myself,” he confessed.

  If she’d been older, or more experienced, Joan might have laughed at him, at his heavy sentiments, delivered with such deliberate clumsiness. But there had been, really, only three men in her life—her father, a high school boyfriend, and her husband; her life had not brought her into contact with the rough welter of worldly men, and she knew almost nothing of their capacity for cleverness, and for hypocrisy. At twenty-seven, she was an innocent, and she was moved. She put out a hand, touched Alden’s sleeve.

  “I shouldn’t have been so harsh,” she said. “I have no right to judge you.”

  “Oh, you do,” said Alden, coming closer. “Yes, you do. If I only had someone like you to help me, to be honest with me—” He moved even closer, and she felt a heat against her cheek, as though the door to a furnace had swung open before her. “Forgive me,” he whispered.

  She was confused; Alden Wood, seeking her forgiveness? Searching her eyes with his own, which were full of contrition? She saw that he was just a little boy, so like all of the boys she spoke to every day. Thinking those sympathetic thoughts, still she stepped back a pace involuntarily as he approached her.

  “You despise me,” he said, in a heartbroken voice.

  “No,” she said, willing herself to stay still as he came nearer.

  For a moment, they looked at one another from very close range; Joan saw a change pass over him, like a curtain whisking away.

  “You’re so beautiful,” he said, and kissed her.

  A brief touch, lip to lip, and yet so much contained in it. It was the world of other possibility, what she might have known had she not married so young; there was the foreign breath, the exotica of beard and moustache. And, too, there was the familiar, the faint taste of whisky, something Gil drank, reminding her that Gil and this stranger were kin in a basic sense.

  She surrendered to the kiss, but when he pulled away there was no feeling that they might go further; he saw something in her eyes, or face, which stopped him.

  “You’re drunk,” she said gently, as though he were a child.

  “So I am,” he said.

  She went out of the bathroom before him, and they walked back down the corridor together, unspeaking and not touching. When they entered the room, he went immediately to the punch bowl, and then rejoined his admirers. She watched him pull Bella Long onto the dance floor, clutching her tight for a slow number, but felt no sense of betrayal. She was more involved in the travel than in the conveyance which had carried her, fascinated by considering what border she had crossed, what new terrain she had sighted, through the kiss of a stranger.

  He was a stranger; and she felt no possessiveness toward him, not then or later. Not even any curiosity; and the kiss had not gone any way toward forging a friendship between them. She never gave a thought to him again, save when he was directly in front of her, and then her thoughts were casual. They had not changed. But she had.

  She had taken a journey, not with him, but because of him. Because of him she had been transported, propelled out of herself and her same life for an inst
ant. She had seen in herself a capacity for sexual response which was entirely random, and which had nothing at all to do with love. The discovery made her thoughtful, and when she went home to Gilbert in the evening, she looked at him and thought, for the very first time, I could leave you.

  The knowledge made her tender, protective, as though it were someone else who menaced him, and not herself. That night, they made love for the first time in a long while. They didn’t speak, during or after; and she heard herself, as if from a distance, giving a series of soft cries, really gasps.

  Afterward, she lay on her side and looked at him gravely. She knew he was puzzled, and afraid to speak. She knew that he would watch her like this until she fell asleep. She closed her eyes.

  I love you, she thought, and wasn’t sure if she spoke aloud. And what’s more, I don’t have to.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  Regular Guy

  “SORREL SOUP TONIGHT,” said Joan as I came through the door.

  “Good,” I said, but the word felt hollow. I sat in the big chair, and looked at my hands. “Jesus,” I said. “No matter how I wash them.”

  “There’s Lava soap in the bathroom,” she said.

  “My father had dirty hands,” I told her, still gazing into my palms. “Jack, too. When I was growing up, my hands were always clean.”

  “Things change,” she said.

  “I never thought I’d have my father’s hands.”

  “They’re not his hands,” she said, seriously. “They’re yours.”

  I looked at her.

  “It’s your own dirt,” she said.

  “It’s ours,” I said, and went to the bathroom to wash.

  By the second week in August, we had dug to ten feet. Glen Walker was down in the hole, compressing the earth; I stood watching him from the hill between the swimming pool site and the building renovation. He worked the enormous backhoe as if it were weightless, rocking back and forth on the bucket and the loader. The machine danced, knuckling back and gently forth, Walker twitching the controls delicately, pressing and patting with such economy of movement that I felt the hairs rising on my arms, standing out in a furry aureola along the muscles there.

  Humans can do very remarkable things, and do them very remarkably well, if they practice long enough. When the Rubik’s Cube craze was at its full, I saw a television program featuring a thirteen-year-old whiz. He manipulated the cube from chaos into order in a little under half a minute; smiling with big strong teeth, he handed it back to the emcee with an arrogant flourish. I envisioned him bent over the cube, at lunch hours, after school, during study hall, spinning the rows and columns of colors this way and that, the joints of the cube creaking. Mumbling instructions to himself: quarter turn, half, full, twist. Concentrating. Until he had it, and was eligible for his glorious half minute. He had earned the applause and the arrogance. At thirteen, he had a talent to be proud of the rest of his life. To that end he had consecrated sweat and discipline, and hours and hours of lonely practice. I admire his effort, and those of others like him, the baton twirlers and the billiard-hall sharpsters. I respect those people who have chosen, out of all of the possible talents in this world, one to which they will dedicate themselves, one to practice and believe in.

  Walker’s work benefited from long years of repetition, but there was also something else to it. Other crew members had as much experience or more. No, Walker had something separate: a kind of grace breathed into his body when he climbed into his seat and put his hands on the controls. The same divine breath which blows alongside Rampal’s across the silver mouthpiece; the same which spreads warmly through the musculature of Olympic gymnasts, making their footing sure. Walker had such grace; it made the equipment he moved come alive for him; a mechanical ballet, it held me riveted, watching.

  I had made the mistake of commending him, early on, walking from the hill after the lunch whistle, to meet him as he came out of the hole.

  “Nice work,” I had said.

  He had hesitated, looking me up and down, then slid his eyes away. I could hear him thinking: Goddamn faggot. He wiped the sweat and dust from his forehead, nodded curtly, turned away.

  I kept my praise to myself after that, arriving each morning and calling out a short greeting to the crew, striding to my observation point. I stayed there most of the morning, keeping my face impassive under my yellow hat, and watching Walker from the hill.

  I was watching him when the news came; I was called to the phone shortly before noon, and a governmental voice informed me that work on the swimming pool would have to be halted.

  “Water table’s too high,” said the copiously titled Richmond official. “You’re interfering with a stream bed. No, I don’t know how you can fix it. No, I don’t have any suggestions. Fixing it’s your problem. All I know is you better stop your digging, and quick.”

  I put a phone call in to Devlin immediately; he came roaring to the site in his little roadster, a ridiculous car for a man his size. He heaved himself out of it and slammed the door.

  “This won’t do,” he said, panting up the hill toward me. “Nossir, this won’t do at all.”

  “What can we do?” I asked.

  “There has to be a way around this,” said Devlin. “I’ve got to have that pool.”

  “I’ll, um, investigate our options,” I said.

  “You do that,” said Devlin darkly, glaring at the abandoned machinery, the empty hole. I had dismissed the crew half an hour before, when the stop order was confirmed.

  We had run up against problems before, in the course of this project. The renovation had snagged several times: first, there was a dangerous interior staircase which would be difficult to remove and impossible to bring up to code; then it had been discovered that the roof would need to be completely retiled, at great cost. But those were the kinds of hitches one expected in projects like this one, easily solved by aesthetic or profit compromise. The government was formidable opposition. Of course, so was Devlin—he wanted that pool. While I watched, his face knotted and went dark red.

  “Think of something,” he said, finally, and stalked away from me.

  I went back to the office, and found Warren Peavy.

  “Tough one,” he said, when I’d explained. “But probably not impossible.”

  “Do you have any suggestions?”

  “Um,” he said. “Well, now.” He frowned. “I’m sure there’s something. Have you tried George?”

  “Yes,” I said. “He said you’d know better than he would.”

  “Well, now,” said Warren, obviously pleased by the flattery. “Let me think a while.”

  That day, I came home to find Joan in tears, curled up in the wingback chair in the living room.

  “Honey,” I said, putting my arms around her. It was unusual for her to cry.

  “It’s so sad,” she said, finally, nasally.

  “What is?” I asked.

  “Amanda.” The name provoked another cascade of emotion.

  “I should have known this would happen,” I said.

  “What do you mean?” she asked, pulling away from me, looking into my face.

  “You’ve been paying so much attention to other people you haven’t allowed yourself to feel anything, all this time. I’m sorry,” I said.

  “Why?” she asked.

  “I should have been paying more attention to you. I’ve been so busy with work, and we’ve hardly seen each other for months now.” She nodded. “That’s all going to change,” I declared. “Starting now.”

  “All right,” she said.

  I promised myself that I wouldn’t expend so much energy on the job; I could see that she needed me; I would dedicate myself to her well-being.

  But work became more demanding, instead of less. I had expected that the situation with the Community Center project was temporary; but after a dozen consultations with Warren and George, I was no closer to a solution. None of the architects I spoke to did more than shrug. “We don’t deal w
ith that kind of stuff,” one of them said.

  So began a traumatic period. I woke from dreams in which I had devised a solution, and scribbled notes onto a pad of paper I kept by the bed. In the morning, the phrases I had written proved incoherent and absurd.

  To make things worse, Devlin took to calling me into his office every day, haranguing me for variable lengths of time. Some days, he spent only a few minutes at it, going straight to the heart of the matter, slashing efficiently at my self-esteem. On other occasions, he devoted more than an hour to his outrage, expressing himself in exquisite, powerful detail. It seemed to depend on his schedule; there was no way I could predict, walking past his secretary, what I was in for on that particular occasion. One horrible day, he did not send for me at all; all day I waited, and at five o’clock I was weak with unrelieved dread. I began to have morning panic attacks, hyperventilating in the washroom, splashing cold water onto my face.

  I gibbered to Joan about the problem; she nodded uncomprehendingly, and tipped vitamin tablets onto my breakfast plate.

  “Jack says you should stand up to him,” she said.

  “Fuck Jack,” I said, nastily.

  “He’s just trying to help,” she said. “It’s what he’d do. He doesn’t understand how different you are.”

  The phone still rang at night. Most often, it was one of the students, adrift during summer vacation. Sometimes it was a Tell Tillie fan, too impatient to write a letter. Less and less often it was Beth. I was trying to be patient about the moratorium, and had not seen her in more than a month. From what I could gather, she was on the verge of independence, but Joan kept the lifeline stretched intact between them.

  “She’s talking about taking a job,” said Joan one night, rubbing my back.

  “That’s healthy, isn’t it?”

  “I don’t know why she wants to work,” she said. “What with her parents and Joe Crawford, she doesn’t need the money.”

  “Maybe she just likes the idea,” I said. “You like your work.”

  “That’s different,” said Joan.

  “I don’t see how,” I said.