Women and Men

by Joseph McElroy

  Again, it was kind but automatic but fast, a kind mouth with a thoughtful pout.

  "You said something in Spanish and Manuel laughed."

  "Pretty raunchy Spanish," the man said.

  "It sounded very fluent."

  Kind wasn’t what she meant about his smile. She saw that, and felt good at the thought that kind was sexy, while he said, "I have to use it sometimes, but I’m always surprised how it comes—and I better not think about it, you know what I mean?"

  They were moving and she had no time now to find anything out. So she asked right out.

  And he said he went back long before Manuel. Same apartment? she asked. Kept it, he said. Things changed? Guessed he was supposed to say yes.

  She didn’t want to get off into rent talk; it was like car talk.

  She learned his apartment—9D—like getting a phone number. She thought she was quite a person.

  Well, she was a mess—but maybe not. The crying had left her alive, and she didn’t give a damn, she was into the future, that was where she was coming from—and she’d come home feeling younger than she’d left this morning.

  "Where are you coming from?" she said. She believed he was in danger.

  The man’s pleasant face stiffened, twisting tighter against pressure. "They still using that expression?"

  The elevator stopped at the ninth floor but Norma went on getting closer to her own, her legs went out to the man, she moved after he moved, and she was opposite the open elevator doorway where he stood, their arms opposite, his breath strong.

  "I’m still there," he said.

  "Please tell me about it," she said, and the door bumped his shoulder and bounced back.

  "I will," he said, and she had the impression that somewhere he had already done so.

  He had stepped back and let the door close between them.

  But she was rising, as if the door had never opened and closed at nine —she had to deliver a message but wouldn’t know what it was until it came out.

  She was already naked for her pre-workshop bath, and didn’t have on her the weight of a bottle of wine she knew now she’d meant to give Gordon in return, yes, for going to Grace’s for the "nude" workshop.

  The door to her apartment was empty, the dark green door itself, numbered and lettered and with a peephole. She pushed her key at the lock and as she found the alignment the pressure already on the lock pushed the door in because it was unlocked. Nancy had been calling, "I’m not really hungry, Daddy."

  He was in front of Norma. He extended his arms toward her, and she joined him (oh, a model that was fitted to him!). She smelled wine in his cheek and knew what he was saying before he said it: "I quit today."

  You can always get it back, she thought, but he didn’t quite pick that up, and she murmured into his ear, "Good, Gordon."

  His eyes skipped by as they had last night when he’d looked away from the news and seemed to speak, and looked back again at the TV screen; but the message she caught now along with other messages in his bony hands holding her arms was the same she’d heard in his mind at that moment last night.

  It had said, "I don’t know if I want you."

  She had known what was in his mind. Did he?

  She had known; but how had she known? The power he had here was only what she had given him.

  She had known what was in his mind because she had helped to put it there.

  "Are you going to tell me you knew it?" said Gordon.

  "You did the right thing," she said. She leaned over and kissed him on a crease of cheek. "Can I have a glass of wine? I’m a bit nervous about tonight."

  Now why had she given him that? Why not.

  She went to the bedroom. Behind her her older daughter’s footsteps curved away and seemed to stop. In pursuit of some intention.

  "Is that all?" said Gordon.

  "Speak," he said. "Did you cash a check today?"

  "I will," she said.

  He stopped at the threshold grasping the lintel above and letting his weight

  go-

  She went on with what she was doing.

  She was not dependent. She wouldn’t talk about it.

  "Is that all?" said Gordon.

  She wouldn’t talk about it; she probably couldn’t explain.

  "Norma?"

  the unknown saved

  He would sing out over his shoulder, Still there? She might be up in the trees, the way he tilted his head back, or in the sky, what there was of it—did this save her from having to answer?— and then again without looking he said over his shoulder, his heavy shoulder, Everything O.K.?

  And he could be the one who needed help: she saw him up ahead, puffing, grabbing a sapling to get himself up, wobble, stagger, or along uneven ground appear to limp, humming, gasping through this shaded upper world of woods so she was concerned about him that this man who called over his shoulder (as if listening not speaking), Still there? could be himself the one who needed help.

  Help, it occurred to her, once in the middle of mountain light. Not help from her, for she was only to ask what his symptoms were, that time, at the summit of a small mountain they had trudged and hauled themselves up and scrambled without direction except up, through an upward abyss of shade.

  For they were very occasional weekend rock climbers. Scramblers. A dark pond at the top, they’d heard. Or an observation tower with initials cut into the gray wood, some still fresh, still pale or burnt-brown. A great rock, they might hear. A great view. A chalet with a player piano.

  No, they were not rock climbers to speak of. Tennis players; well, doubles players, who liked to walk in the woods where you could hear yourself think and they would take a trip of a couple of hundred miles and when they got there walk, walk up a small, green mountain.

  Well, Mount Everett (don’t smile), in the Berkshires near her old college. It had been old in her day—why not?—and offered a large nineteenth-century Gothic chapel. She came so near majoring in economics her parents announced it to their friends one Christmas. But she loved her history teacher and followed him from term to term taking all the courses he gave or recommended, actually had a term of Greek. The Berkshire hills was what the history teacher had called them; like a round mountain, she said, and her husband smiled short of laughter.

  But the way that he led her along rock-impacted brook gullies and up through stunted firs thicketed branch upon branch that came back at her face, she felt that the snatches of lyrics he puffed out could be parts of a long song she wasn’t hearing much of, for he was sending it forward, an ongoing song, sending a message to the top to whatever waited for them, and she looked behind her and around her, and some came back to her.

  Almost like, Everything okay?

  And, Still there?

  Through the trees off to the right, the paved road hardly existed, until a car motor crept close. And then it wasn’t toward them; her husband looked toward it, kept looking for two or three steps, you probably couldn’t see the car, it passed them at some point and it might flash sun once, twice, through the trees, as if to see these climbers; the climb was hot, so Hey why weren’t we as smart as those guys, she heard herself think (two in the front seat, whoever those people in the car were, or two in front and one or two in back, possibly one in front with two in back, but never one in front one in back)— yet she put her foot down on something soft and spongy no doubt his brain a mushy witch-blend of fir needles, stewed twigs, and the fungus of the earth, and knew that the Why-weren’t-we-as-smart-as-those-guys thought wasn’t hers because she was happy here on foot.

  So it had to be his thought. Only because she knew he’d had it before. Thinking of his famous parents more than these folk passing in a car you couldn’t see, who on a warm morning made the ascent by car. He only spoke the words of a song now, he didn’t sing, for the tune had quieted down between the words "It looks like," he was saying, "it’s climb’m’ clear up to the sky." So she knew he had put the other thoughts away and perhaps recalled hi
s one audience behind him, and she could almost lose him, knowing he was about to throw himself down on the steep rise to sit back on his elbows facing her but probably closing his eyes to the treetops and sky as she came up to him, sweat on his brow.

  But he didn’t stop and turn, much less sit, he wasn’t there, he’s passed beyond the trees, through the last thicket into clearing and as if he was so motionless that she didn’t see him.

  Or it was that a clearing had come to him, all around him, the clearing, she was angry and she loved where she was, she was fifty yards at least behind him in trees and thickets, if he got too far ahead let him go past the top, down the other side, completely round the world, he’d find her in front of him. He flickered back to her, a piece of green, green flannel shirt, he was in the middle of mountain light if that wasn’t putting it too strongly. They must be getting there. She couldn’t see how far ahead he was now, she was almost to the clearing, she raked her calf sickeningly on a bramble right through her jeans, old soft jeans, much machined, soft as skin. A distinct tread and small crash of crackling came so close she thought it was herself and she looked for a red squirrel, a bird; she put her hand on a birch trunk, a dry, tough-sprung curl of bark, and didn’t see him too well through the last growth of scrub fir and a tangle she had never seen before of bright holly and low alder (with two hands she pulled a tiny pine cone off), and if he did look back to see how she was doing she couldn’t tell until she thrashed through and her hand swept out away from her a springy branch, and she saw they still had a ways to go but out in low brush and rock up to her right.

  The view plunged out to the left. The air hummed with space past and future, hummed like haze over the velvet of valley, the quiet land where there would be people. Listen, it all lived apart from her but she was in it and it didn’t need to be aware of her, its unheard gongs, a noon siren she absolutely knew was about to go off, the crows, the agitated speed like another sound she didn’t put her finger on, and then some cheerful greetings she imagined from memory between two women across a street was it?—no, between a vegetable garden, no, some rows of cultivated raspberries and an upper window of a sunny house, all preserved in a concentrated drop of distance, and she wanted to call to her husband, him, Hey turn around and look at me, Dobbie, but she called out, "Remember Austria? how we heard the farmgirls talking way down the valley?"

  He was already half-turned, as she held this last branch bent before she stepped clear, and she held that bough’s pressure for a moment seeing what he would do, if he would look at her. She had a small rock in her other hand.

  He was breathing shallow and fast and seemed to be in trouble, but he was moved, she could see, he was sagging, but he was feeling something. She felt the pull and knew she needed to, to be once more absorbed by him, but he needed help, but his beard now how did you neither leave it on nor shave it off, to be once more absorbed by what? Why, by his mouth of course.

  She waited for him to do something; he didn’t turn far enough to see her. She was the explorer, not he, she was between herself and him. He said, so she couldn’t see his lips move even, "They said you can hear what you can see."

  He meant in Austria, in the southern mountains.

  "Do you have a pain?" she called to him, his breathing fast and shallow.

  Absorbed also by his eyes once. And now his eyes turned nearly toward her, she knew she was in the corner of one. This threatened to irritate her, and she and her husband each waited for the other to do something, while she held the branch bent back so it pressed tight at her palm and she leaned against it, and as if with the catapult force of her branch lobbed her stone at him, which got bigger as it went away from her toward him.

  Her husband Dobbie, who was wont to sing while climbing and to draw her after him as if he was the one who was the powerhouse, now dropped to the ground. If you can sit, the thought came to her, why stand; if you can lie down, why sit? He sat profile to her on a rock, so she felt he did not want to look at her and knew she would not move free of the bent branch until he did look at her, not knowing how close the stone had come to his ear though it was he who had made her just miss.

  Hold everything. If he won’t look, fine; let him not look. He’s got thoughts, too, out here in mountain light whatever mountain light is, light’s light unless you’re doing stained glass or into taking pictures or you’re trying to get to the end of a field, get back to the house get through the chores before night falls and the corn sprouts under you in the dark. So hold everything. Cut.

  Okay, let him not look, if something would happen if he did.

  Slide back down the mountain to bed, or did we reach the deep pond at the summit and on the pond’s dark surface an observation tower floating and on the top platform the people who came up in that car are singing the breathtaking beauty of their view while as for us instead of driving off in their parked car we can’t stop as we reach the summit but skid past the signs, elevation above sea level, arrow to the restrooms, and pelt down the far side half a mile down and more, where there is also a bed waiting unless it has been brought to us where we are, where we’re dropping.

  But cut. Back to bed. The bed—a long shot—can be anywhere since the lights are out anyway; the bed could be anywhere, you think for a moment: a double bed alone on the Mexican plateau guarded by starving jaguarundi, or under the roof of a small, charming wood-frame garden house in San Francisco up the steep, bay ward slope of Telegraph Hill, a beach hotel in Libya, April in Lima, except no, the cool, white, rough, clean-laundered sheet material in which the featherbed-like comforter gets buttoned in, that weighed them comfily down, is Austria, the cowbell clunking, no, please, tinkling, up the midnight meadow rising so steeply close past their second-floor bedroom it was the mountain in an adjacent dream, not the one they were on, and by the light of that bell there was Dobbie’s welt where a childhood friend had knifed him in the shoulder blade after Dobbie said his friend’s parents were ignorant as the day was long. He and she laughed about his ten-year-old language, for I will give my parents the business but you leave them alone, got that?

  She put a fingertip on the bare welt and proceeded to press, because she wanted to talk to him she guessed. But he was the one who spoke as if she’d pressed a button and out came her name: "Freya?" he said, still facing away from her lying on his side and sounding in the dark room a grainy threat of inquiry that another woman would have taken for his being awake and thinking (if not ready for anything). But she wanted to talk. She wanted to ask why he had not once looked at her (she could swear) during dinner with the two from Philadelphia who had come all the way to Austria to the Carinthian Mountains an hour from Italy, an hour from Yugoslavia, to meet a couple from New York and they, first the woman, it was on the tip of her tongue, then the man, then she again, then he again, then both, had averred that they knew that name from somewhere, until Dobbie got the Philadelphia couple off onto the question whether the schnitzel, that in all its delicate thinness there was less of every time they looked at their plates, was veal or in fact pork, which he then had led into the question whether Wiener in Wienerschnitzel ever meant "Vienna" to hungry Americans (not to be confused with Vienna sausage) and when it was remarked that Vienna was more famous for other things, he coolly went on to speculate that many Americans might think that Wiener in Wiener schnitzel meant "wiener" as in hot dog or frankfurter, which could, though not necessarily, be pork, until the woman, who put the last piece of her schnitzel into her mouth and was deeply tanned under her makeup, became deeply moved or certainly erupted in ecstasy—ecstasy— announcing there and then because it had come to her the profession of Dob-bie’s famous parents.

  And so now in the darkness of the bedroom he didn’t reply to his wife Freya that of course he had looked at her, of course he had (he didn’t reply —for what would be the point? he knew he hadn’t—as if he’d been afraid to).

  But his quiet was not now drowsiness. She pressed the welt and spoke into the curly hair over his neck, bu
t not what she absolutely had to speak about but—she didn’t believe it—how concerned she was and wouldn’t he see a doctor, well not here, that is not down in St. Veit, but when they got home, for this afternoon further up the mountain he hadn’t been himself at the moment when they’d heard the buzzing sound of a motor and she’d said, A motorcycle, and he’d said, That’s no bike, that’s a chain saw, she had seen he was ready to keel over into those Austrian raspberry bushes they’d found; yet "You weren’t having a heart attack exactly," she said, and she was grimly entertained now saying all this stuff which was not what she’d set out to say, "and it wasn’t what smokers get"—"how could it be? he murmured hoarsely—"and though you’re not overweight it might be high blood pressure, it might be anything. You were—" words came—"spinning into yourself, you know; you seized up, it wasn’t asthma, I don’t say it wasn’t the climb, but you were—" the words came—"transfixed, and I thought there he’s going to fall into the raspberry bushes and never be seen again"—"hopefully," came the droll murmur.

  And at that instant—but God it was never at that instant, it was always long known, long prepared for, but kept in the corner of the eye as if hardly there till the mood took you to set a revelation to the words at that instant I suddenly saw—that, well, hopefully was how she had looked at him long ago—with hope for herself. Met him in an early health-food restaurant she didn’t officially manage but seemed to because the boy and girl dancers who waited on table came to her for everything, and before this bearded, logical-spoken customer had thought about ordering, this customer who couldn’t make up his mind whether to be aggressively shy or aggressively charming and recited Falstaff suddenly to her as she stood over him, and she suddenly saw he had charmed the forks and knives right off the table so she had to replace them—yes, before this customer had thought about ordering she had discovered he ran a small company that made documentary films for television, and he, if he remembered, had discovered that she did not live around there, the Village, but a subway ride away in Brooklyn Heights in a top-floor studio that was very beautiful, very tiny, and too much money, and where, he soon found, she had maximized her space by using cushions and reducing the furniture to the bare minimum although she liked to cook and not health food.