“I would not bet money on that.” Muriel dug her spatula deep in the pan of vegetables. “Don’t you think you should get her to move?” she badgered.
“Muriel! How could I? Don’t you think I feel guilty too? All of this was my idea, remember?”
“See!” cried Muriel. “That’s just what I mean! She’s the kind of person you try to help, and it blows up in your face! And you know what else? She’s so fucked up that there’ll always be some way you can help her, and she’ll always make it blow up in your face.”
“For God’s sake,” I said, “she’s not that fucked up. “She’s really very smart. She’s just very emotionally distraught. From the whole thing with Geoff.”
Muriel snorted. “What a bunch of B.S. Geoff is exactly the kind of fucked up garbage she draws to herself.”
I reached for the carafe of wine. “I drew Geoff, too, remember?”
“Right,” said Muriel. “And if you’re smart you won’t do it again.”
“And,” I pointed out, “you drew Jack.”
“Fine. I did. And we got married because of a page in a book. I was a fool. I thought it was romantic. I thought it was an amazing coincidence. But guess what—” said Muriel, whacking a clove of garlic with the handle of a knife, “it was a pure, unadulterated mistake. And I wasted time finding that out. Silly, stupid me.” The sauce in the skillet was bubbling. Muriel minced the garlic and threw it in. She rinsed the knife in the sink. “I know now how not to waste time. And I intend to use that knowledge well.”
I thought for a minute. “Well,” I said, “maybe you do. But your knowledge, Muriel, isn’t always right. Your knowledge, or whatever it is that protects you, doesn’t see everything. There are things in your life that you need to go for—risks that you need to take.” I looked into the yellow-white clearness of the wine. “In many ways you’re like my old boyfriend Larry.”
Muriel raised her eyebrows. “Me? I’m like your old boy-friend? That’s a new one. Thanks a lot.”
I fingered the rim of my wine glass. “He was paranoid.”
“Paranoid?” I heard a note of a shriek. “You think I’m paranoid?”
I nodded slowly. I was going to have to be careful. “You’re scared,” I said slowly, “of finding out for yourself. Like when you went to the psychic. You wanted to know all the answers beforehand. That’s what Cornelia meant. That you have to be willing to face whatever music there is.”
Muriel’s face had turned a strange color. “Face what music?” she demanded. “I face everything, Leslie Kovalsky!”
I shook my head ever so slightly. I had dived deep into the risk. It was probably already too late.
“Goddammit!” shouted Muriel. “I’ve done a lot, do you realize? I’ve built a great business! I’ve hung some pretty good paintings in some pretty important places! I’ve faced plenty of the shit that I’ve had to, Leslie! You don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about!”
I stood up. “I’m sorry,” I said. “I’ve made you very angry.”
Muriel was trembling, the spatula raised like a stick in her hand.
“I’m sorry, Muriel,” I said again. “I said too much. It was stupid of me.” I stopped. My knees felt funny, weak and a little wobbly. Muriel stood quivering, staring at me. I reached for my car keys in the basket on the sideboard. I walked over to Muriel to give her a hug. She remained stiff, the spatula tight between her fingers.
The coast highway led me home. Darkness shrouded the road like the lining of a heavy cape. I touched the window of the car. The glass was cold. It made the sick feeling in me suddenly worse. I tried not to think. What was done was done. I had said what I had to say.
I had reached the mountain with the leaning pines. In the dark, they could barely be seen, black shapes squatting dimly on the cliffs. In the daylight they were strange, half-finished dwarfs: scrubby cauliflower florets sprouting up one side, dry bark on the other reaching for the sky. Growth and no growth. All the same tree. Was that what we had to do? Pick sides?
Cornelia was out when I got in. I heard her key in the lock later on, the front door doing its double thump as she carefully pulled it closed. For all her legendary wildness, she was a good roommate: neat enough, considerate, and not one to gobble supplies. I liked her mind. She would listen carefully in a conversation, process the right details, and come up—unafraid—with a crystal response. She was far from lyrical, often too direct, but I was getting used to quick disposal of the trimmings for the knife-slice to the core. More and more, I grew fond of the plunge. It was like an elevator that dropped on gravity alone. You told Cornelia something and bang! you were already on the ground floor. Staring at the bottom line. A quick trip, and one with its own hilarious rewards.
We had fun, she and I. Peer-bread, trips to shopping malls, saunas at the Y. Once, hearing Cornelia’s accent, a woman in the sauna had asked us how we’d met. I tried to explain the Geoff story, in the sketchiest way, and Cornelia had burst out laughing, seized her towel, and shot out the swinging door.
But now there was gridlock. I turned over in bed. My clock ticked mechanically on the floor. Cornelia ran water for a minute in the bathroom. Then the house fell silent as she shut her bedroom door.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
The Dancer
I did not call Muriel for a while. And Muriel did not call me. Cornelia’s cast curbed her housecleaning somewhat, but not enough to cut into her income. “I am glad this is not my other hand,” she declared frequently. We avoided the subject of Muriel. It was the only topic that our elevator-plunging frankness seemed to skirt; perhaps things would recover when the cast came off.
I swam late at the Y one night, lingering later yet in the sauna. It was almost nine as I pulled up to the house. Tail-lights on the end of a truck bed slowly drifted away. I frowned.
“Guess who I think I just saw,” I said as I closed the front door. Cornelia sat on the carpet with a book. She stared at me. I nodded, crossing to the bookshelf for a tissue.
“Ya, what does he want?” She put her book on the floor. “Why is he passing here? To see if the light is on?”
I shook my head. “Who knows.”
She was staring at the half-pulled window blind. “He is weert.”
I heated water for tea.
“I have to ask you something,” she began, the truck forgotten. “Do you think I can make tapes from your tapes? Can we get another cassette player? Do you know someone?”
I thought for a minute. “There’s Kevin,” I suggested.
“Who is Kevin?”
“The next-door neighbor.”
“Which neighbor? I have never seen him. He is living next door? There or there?” She pointed left and right.
“That way,” I pointed to the right.
“And he will borrow us this cassette deck? No,” she caught herself, “not borrow, you are saying lend. He will lend us this?”
I nodded. “I think he would. He goes on a lot of business trips and we can ask him to let us use it when he goes on his next trip.”
“And he is living right here?” She pointed again with her book.
“Yup. He’s a really nice guy,” I said. “He really is. I wish I could get to know him better, but he stays away.”
“And why is he doing that?”
“I don’t know,” I sat on the floor with my tea. “Neighbors are sometimes people you never get to know very well. Some of them prefer to stay distant.” I sipped the hot tea. “I also think he’s afraid of women.”
“Ya, why?”
I shook my head. “I really don’t know. I don’t know him very well.”
“But he will lend us this cassette deck? And you don’t know him so well?”
“I think that’s something he would do. Sometimes when he’s away, he asks me to get his mail. So I don’t think he would mind the tape deck. He knows I’m careful with things.”
“Great. So when should we ask him?”
I put down my tea. “I’ll call him r
ight now.”
He didn’t mind lending us the tape deck. “Oh, great,” said Cornelia as she overheard my end of the conversation. “Ask him how long can we keep it.”
“Can we keep it through your trip?” I asked.
That was fine, he said. He would bring it by tomorrow night. Then a thought occurred to me. “Would you like to stay for dinner?” I asked.
The words could have been a razor blade. I heard him catch his breath.
“No, that’s okay,” he said. “I’ll just bring the tape deck over.”
“Come on, Kevin,” I said, “You’ve only lived next to me for a year. We’re inviting you to dinner.”
The blade danced through him again. He hesitated. Come on, you dodo, I thought, what’s the matter with you?
“Okay. That’s really nice of you. I’ll come for dinner.”
“Yay!” I crowed as I hung up the phone. “I can’t believe this. He’s going to actually do it!”
“He never ate here before?” said Cornelia.
I shook my head. Stars were jiggling in front of my eyes.
“Ya, why is this so great?” asked Cornelia. “He never comes over here?”
“Never,” I said. “I’m telling you. He runs away. Once he gave me a cassette tape for my birthday, but he didn’t even bring it over. He saw me reading a magazine in the backyard and when I went inside for a drink of water he wrapped it up in that plastic packing material—you know, the stuff with the bubbles—and threw it over the fence. I still have the plastic stuff.” I rummaged in a closet and pulled it out, with the bit of pink ribbon it had come with. “Here,” I said, holding it in front of Cornelia.
Cornelia inspected it as though it were ancient hieroglyphic papyrus. “Huh,” she grunted. “He seems weert, too.”
“Who isn’t,” I sighed. “But, I’m telling you, he’s the nicest guy I’ve met so far. He’s the kindest, he’s intelligent, he’s calm—but as long as I’ve known him he keeps running away.”
“Huh,” said Cornelia. “Weert.”
I suddenly clapped my hand to my mouth. “Oh, no! Tomorrow’s Tuesday, my late night at work! I won’t have time to make dinner!”
“Don’t worry,” said Cornelia. “I will do it. I will buy some stuff and make the dinner.”
I left a message on Kevin’s answering machine the next afternoon. “Hi, Kevin,” I said, “This is Leslie. I won’t be home till about eight tonight. So anytime after that is fine for you to come over. See you later.”
I got home at ten after eight. The living room was steamy from Cornelia’s efforts. “What are you making?” I asked, peering through the mist.
“Fresh spaghetti with this sauce—cream and spinach, and this salad, and I got wine.”
“Wow,” I said. Mounds of green linguine draped from a styrofoam tray. She was boiling a huge pot of water and another pot contained a fragrant green concoction that was evidently the spinach sauce. She had chopped mountains of cabbage into my steel mixing bowl and was mixing a dressing. “It looks wonderful.”
She poured some of the dressing into the cabbage. “He is really weert,” she announced. “He just called here and asked, ‘Is Leslie home?’ and I said no, and then he said, ‘When she comes home will you please tell her to call me and then I will come over.’”
“Well, I left a message for him and told him to come after eight,” I explained.
“I still think this is weert,” she insisted. “He is afraid to be with me here? He can only come when you are here?”
“Well, I’ll call him now,” I said.
He knocked at the door a couple of minutes later, the cassette deck under his arm and the lead wires trailing their red and black connectors. He brought a bottle of red wine. Cornelia looked at him through the steam. We set the tape deck on top of mine and she brought the hot pot of pasta to the table. Anchoring it against her cast, she loaded our plates.
“Oh, my God,” I protested, “not this much!”
“Ya, you will eat it,” she said, doling out the sauce.
Kevin laughed. His eyes had flickered as he took in the cast, but he asked no questions.
The linguine was amazingly good. I hadn’t even known Cornelia could cook. She lived on pear bread, tortillas and tea. Kevin asked her about her stay.
“I came for vacation, but then I met this idiot Geoff.” She pronounced it idjut. “I am sure you know about him.”
“Is that the guy?” asked Kevin, turning to me.
“Mr. Incredible,” I nodded.
“Idjut,” said Cornelia. “He was always using this word. You are so incredible.” Her face knitted up in mimicry. “If I ever hear this word again—” she threatened, launching into a tirade about her summer, how she had lived in his bus and how they had gotten the apartment. “Don’t ever live in a bus. It is horrible. Hot like you cannot believe and horrible.”
“I don’t know why you even tried it,” Kevin said.
“Ya, for a while you can try anything. When you are on vacation you don’t care where you are living. A—what do you call this for camping?—tent, thank you—is not much better than a bus, right? So if you can be in a tent, why not in a bus?”
I ate my pasta while she went on to tell him about her babysitting, which she hated, and her housecleaning. She was getting testy and bitter. I wondered if it was the wine. Kevin, with his unequalled diplomacy, gave her the stage, letting her rant and steam, sputter and rave. Now and again he fielded her rage with the grace of a gentle sea. It struck me that he was a dancer. In front of him was a lesser dancer, reeling and listing out of control. He used his gift as one would a wand, to tap her, correct her, guide her back to the purpose of the stage. I watched, stunned by him and embarrassed by her. It had to be partly the wine. She said it again: “Without this fucking green card, I can only do this fucking babysitting and fucking housecleaning. What else do you think I can do?”
Kevin put down his fork. He leaned across the table and looked her in the eye. “Hey,” he said meaningfully, his palms on the tabletop, “If I could help you I would. Do you understand? If I could help you, I would.”
Cornelia twirled a length of green pasta into a clump. “Ya, okay.” She tossed her head. “That’s great. But you cannot, so what’s the big deal?” She concentrated on the clump, put the fork down, and took a big drink of wine.
We changed the subject. Kevin explained to me about his new job and the traveling he had to do. Cornelia got up and disappeared into her room. We heard her making a phone call. I talked to Kevin for the rest of the evening. Sometimes she would come out of her room and sit at the table with us, listening and making a cynical comment or two. He was watching her, amused at her abruptness and slightly curious. She was destroying friendships in Germany by the sound of the reports she gave me as she rejoined our party. Oh boy, I thought. She’s waging some kind of war.
She cleared the table and made us tea, insisting that I stay with Kevin. I didn’t mind. I had cooked for weeks for the whole world, it seemed, and now I was glad to have someone wait on me. Kevin was loosening up. Maybe it was the wine. The conversation was nothing like the one we had on the beach. I thought back to the windy day, the boat, and the kelp strewn across the sand. I looked at the candle Cornelia had lit and the silverware on the table and Kevin sitting across from us. I put my foot up on my chair and hugged my knee. I felt happy.
He stood up to leave a little after ten. “Thanks, guys,” he said. “I had a great time. Cornelia, thanks for the dinner, it was great, and I enjoyed meeting you. I’ve got to go back and pack for my eight o’clock flight to Atlanta.”
“Have a safe walk home,” Cornelia bid him sarcastically. We looked at her and both of us laughed. He had only a few feet to go, obviously. She was being funny.
She remained at the table after he left, the candle letting out a waxy smell in front of her as its wick drooped and sank into its wet, molten center. I ran hot water over the stack of dishes in the sink.
“So, Cornelia,�
� I said, “What do you think of Kevin?”
The water churned from the faucet. I waited for her to answer. I lowered the gush on the dishes and turned around.
“Well,” I repeated, “What do you think of him?”
She was staring somewhere, six feet ahead, her eyes narrow slits as she fingered the stem of a wine glass. The hand in the cast sat motionless in her lap. “Ya,” she said slowly. “I would like to meet Kevin. Will you let me?”
I frowned. Meet Kevin? What sort of German-English translation was this? Meet him? Go out with him? She had already met him. Would I let her? Who was I? I played the dumb card.
“Sure. Why not?”
“I would like to call him now. To ask him how was his walk home.” She was still staring at the air six feet ahead.
“You want to call him? Now?”
“Ya. Do you have his number?”
“It’s in the rolodex.”
She stood up in a kind of slow deliberation and crossed to the shelf for the rolodex. She had still not looked at me. I turned back to the sink.
I heard her drag the phone into her room and shut the door. I cleaned the remains of the dinner—stove, counters, tabletop, dishes. There was still wine undrunk. I corked it and put it away. She had made a huge amount of pasta. I put it in Tupperware and snapped on the lid. I looked at the clock. It was ten thirty. I had promised to make a call to Steve. It was verging on too late.
Cornelia was still on the phone. I gave her one more minute and then traveled down the hall. I knocked, pushing upon the door. She sat dreamily, facing the wall.
“Ya, but I just want to be with you,” I heard.
What? I thought. Was she still talking to him? What was going on? I waited. She didn’t care that I stood in the doorway. I played another dumb card.
“Um, excuse me,” I said. “I need the phone. I hate to do this, but I need to call Steve. It’s already very late.”
She covered the mouthpiece. “Ya, two more minutes,” she said. Her face was stony and her eyes had turned beady and hard.
I shrank back into the hallway and moved back to the kitchen. I sponged the countertops again and wiped the cutting board. The two minutes turned into ten. It was quarter to eleven. I had to re-enter the fray.
The Shadow Man Page 15