CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
Contronym
Kevin had found a house to buy. He had looked at one a few blocks east with fruit trees in the front yard, and before I knew it he was going through escrow and was very excited about moving and settling down and owning property. He had been off on so many trips that the whole thing came together at the very last minute and now the place was going to be his.
“Boy, I’ve waited a long time for this,” he said. His books and clothes were in boxes and he was moving some that weekend and the rest the next. He looked up at me as he stirred the tea he had poured for me and squeezed the tea bag with a spoon. “I won’t be your neighbor anymore, but that’ll probably be a good thing. I think it’s better for us, don’t you?”
I nodded. “Yes. I think so, too.”
“I am totally, completely overjoyed,” said Kevin, putting my tea mug on the kitchen table in front of me. “I am finally a homeowner. Do you realize what that means?”
I shook my head. “No.” I watched him charge excitedly around the room. “What does it mean?”
Kevin put his foot up on a chair. “It means,” he began, counting off on his fingers, “that one, I’ll save a shitload of money in taxes; two, I’ll have something to call mine; and three, I’ll be paying myself—get it?—not some lousy landlord. I’ll be paying me!”
“Good,” I said. “I’m glad.”
Kevin took his foot off the chair and shut the silverware drawer. “Wow,” he said. “It’s going to be great. No, it’s already great. I own a home. Do you understand, Leslie? I’m finally a homeowner.”
I shook my head, puzzled. “I’m happy for you.”
“I’m happy for me, too.” He rubbed his hands together. “Boy oh boy. I can’t wait to get out of this place. I can’t wait till I’m settled in my new house. Do you realize, Leslie, do you realize?”
I didn’t get it. What was there to be that excited about? A new house was a new house. Actually, it wasn’t a new house—it was an old house. So it was yours, and not a landlord’s. You paid yourself. You built and added and changed appliances. It appreciated as time passed and you stood the chance of collecting a chunk of cash when and if you sold it. But that was theoretical and there were a lot of headaches along the way and for the time that you lived in it you had a lot of responsibility that probably a large percentage of the world’s population would prefer to be without. So what was so great about owning a house? How did it make you different?
“You don’t get it, do you?” he said grimly. “You don’t make any real money, that’s why.”
I stared at him blankly.
He put his hand on his hip. “What do you make anyway, Leslie? Huh, Leslie? You can tell me. I’ve slept with you.”
I stared at him.
He leaned over me, hissing. “Leslie.” The s sound rang in my ears as my face burned. Then I realized he was angry. “Leslie, you don’t understand.” The words fell like ice, chips of soul-searing ice. I knew he hated me. I saw the fire surge inside him, the flame eating and blackening the carefully woven bridge I had worked so hard to build to him.
“Understand what?” I tried to be brave.
He strode to the middle of the kitchen. “You don’t understand what a house means, do you?”
I said nothing.
“Leslie, your parents were wealthy. You grew up in a house, you had money, you had plenty to eat.” His fists were still clenched at his sides and he was shouting at me, but the shouting, rage-filled, came out a whisper. I watched him, a cold stone growing in my stomach.
“Your parents were wealthy. My parents were poor. We never—get it?—never owned a home. To this day, my mother lives in federally subsidized housing. I have never had four walls that I could call a home.”
I watched him, wide-eyed. I felt terrible. “I’m sorry,” I said. “I’m sorry.” I crossed the room to where he had planted himself and stood very close to his shaking tenseness. “I’m very sorry,” I said. “I didn’t know that that was how you grew up. I didn’t know that the word house meant that.”
He continued to tremble. I hugged him. I felt him stay very stiff and then he slowly put one arm around my back.
“I’m sorry,” I said again. “If you ever talk about your house again, I’ll know now. I’ll know what you mean.”
Dear Diary: After that he accepted my apology and went into his walk-in closet to get a belt. We went out to dinner at the Mexican restaurant and on the way there he told me about his shares of company stock. I guess it’s good to have incentives like that, I said. This isn’t just incentives, he said. This is different. I own the company.
We sat at a table toward the back, next to a piano where a man warmed up and played odd tunes, not Mexican and not anything else. The music was a little haunting and a little pleasant and the large wooden cut-outs of cacti and troll-like men in sombreros seemed to be speaking a strange comedy-pain through the music, smiling and bursting with the bright paint that covered them, the bright decorative lies they wore. Kevin ordered me a basket of corn tortillas. I dug at butter in foil-wrapped cubes, smiling self-consciously at him as he watched me work through the basket and sip my cup of tea. He smiled back from time to time, as though his mind was interpreting us in a strange and knowing way, and the meaning of the Morse code that was coming through was never to be found out.
We left an hour or so later and as we crossed the street to his car a Mexican busboy came running out shouting Señor! Señor! and we turned around and there was Kevin’s black leather jacket, hanging from the end of the busboy’s arm. Wow, said Kevin, I can’t believe I almost lost that.
Then we drove back to his house and he looked at the kitchen clock. Wow, he said, I am so exhausted I need to go to bed. It was ten thirty. As we walked through the kitchen I grabbed my bag and pulled out my little notebook. I took a pen from Kevin’s telephone stand and wrote something in the book.
What are you writing, he asked me. I shut the notebook and put it in my bag. Just something for work, I said.
What? he asked. You can tell me, can’t you?
I looked at him. Sure, I said. I wrote this. I showed him the notebook: Browning, 7 fax. I faxed a client seven pages this afternoon and I forgot to write it in the fax log. We charge our clients for faxes.
Huh, he said. He laughed. You have a fax log? We have a fax log, too. But the difference is, he laughed again—cuttingly—in your office, you keep the fax log. Then he turned and went into the bedroom.
I took off my jeans and shoes and got in bed next to him. He was already flat on his back, his chiropractor pillow tucked under his knees. I lay on top of him for a minute, hugging his shoulders and neck, and then I got off and turned on my side to sleep.
It was dark in the room. The light from the streetlamp cast a cold blueness on the stark dark-cloaked white of the walls. Kevin snored next to me. My eyes were wide open. I lay on my side and listened to the in-and-out hissing of air as I breathed. The difference is, in your office, Leslie, you keep the fax log. I heard him say it again. The difference is, in your office, Leslie … What do you make anyway, Leslie? Huh, Leslie? It wasn’t fair. It wasn’t even right. In my office we all kept the fax log—me, Hilda, Steve, the other lawyers, the secretaries, the file clerks. We all wrote in it.
I turned over. Kevin snored, his face to the ceiling. I felt his thigh next to my hip. I moved so I wouldn’t touch him.
One, two, one, two. I breathed. The cold rock inside me swelled, grating against my innards as I took the oxygen in. One, two, one, two. The difference is, Leslie … you don’t make any real money, do you?
I stood up. Very quietly, I felt for my jeans. I pulled them on, along with my fuzzy, hooded sweatshirt. I felt for the backs of my shoes. Carrying them silently, putting one bare foot in front of the other, I tiptoed out of the room. The floorboards, luckily, failed to creak. The screen door went thwang as I stepped onto the brick, and quietly, I stole down the steps. I took them one, two, one, two.
Sam, the stray cat with the matted hair and red and brown spots, circled around the beach chair I sat in on Kevin’s porch. The sun was coming up pale and yellow, cutting through the gray air of morning on its usual slant through the pine trees, almost exposing, like a National Geographic camera might, the dewdrops in the air. The chair against my back felt squat and uncomfortable and cold, and even Sam thought so as he tiptoed and brushed me and stepped on and off my knees.
“You tell him, Leslie,” said Sam, twitching the very tip of his tail. His cold nose touched the skin of my leg and I rubbed the spot dry with my sleeve.
“Come here, Sam,” I whispered. Sam sat down out of my reach and licked his shoulder.
“I would tell him, Leslie,” Sam said again, watching me. “I would tell him how you feel.”
I wrapped my arms around my knees. Sam stared at me and then came forward and rubbed his matted side on my legs. I reached out for him. He ducked my fingers and nosed around the porch railing. I hugged my knees again. Sam ran a ring around my chair, brushing against it as he passed, and then rubbed hard against my ankle. I patted his bony back. He slithered away from my hand.
“You are a sorry, shabby cat,” I said. “You’re too weird to let anyone be nice to you.” Weert. Even Sam was weert. A sheddo, as Cornelia would say. His cat soul tearing into the land of Maximum Distance as his ragged body pressed pathetically for closeness. A walking paradox. I thought of how many words I knew that meant one thing and also its opposite. Cleave was one. Cleave meant to cling to and to pull apart. Like Sam the cat, like Kevin the man. There were other words, too, that worked the same way. I had thought of one a couple of months ago. I put my head on my knees and tried to remember.
The screen door clicked, and Sam the cat gave a start. I turned.
Dear Diary: Kevin stood with a finger on the latch. Hi Leslie, he said. His face looked sleepy. Come in.
It was the beginning of a very long talk. I heard you leave, he said. I heard you get up and go home. I was going to call you this morning. Do you want to tell me what’s wrong.
I told him about the macro theory I had come up with during the night. I had figured it all out in terms of macros. If you’ve ever worked with computers, I told him, macros are these strings of steps you put together under one name. Every time you type that name, the string of steps automatically gets done. He looked at me, puzzled, as I explained this, as though he were saying What the hell am I listening to this for, and then I said, You see, Kevin, you have come up with macros to use on me—these one-line sentences that, to you, put me in my place, or a place lower than you, that turn me from the “have” that you think I was born to the “have not” that you think you were born. With every one-liner, you get to be the “have.”
He stared at me. He was lying in bed with the sheet pulled up to his stomach and I was sitting on the edge. It was what I said about the fax machine, right? he said. I nodded. And my salary, I said. Those were macros, Kevin: The difference between your office and my office is you keep the fax log. You don’t make any real money, Leslie. My fingernails dug into my palm and I bit my lip. I don’t even keep the fax log, Kevin, I cried out, at my office we all do!
He stared at me again. His face was like a giant sky, with weather patterns scudding toward and away from each other, storms gathering and clouds clearing and cold winds blowing through it all. I’m sorry, he said, I’m sorry if I hurt you. I really didn’t mean to hurt you. Then the dark clouds gathered on his forehead and he drew in his breath and as it came out he said, I take a hundred percent responsibility if I hurt you, but if I pushed buttons in you that were there to push, then I don’t take responsibility for that. I think there were some buttons there that got pushed.
And then the storm clouds whirled and convened and blew apart and first he told me I better put my shoes back on and leave and then he asked me to stay, would I like a cup of tea. All the while, he kept looking at the clock; he was meant to be moving and his friends were coming with a truck at two. That’s right, I said, you’re moving today.
He looked at my face and for a moment the storm cleared and just that little patch of blue made everything a lot easier and we talked for a couple of hours and then I went home. I’ll call you, he said. I’ll call you when I get settled in.
Once again I was back to zero. The sweeping oval baseline, the racetrack of worry, the asphalt ring you zoomed around—and around and around—like those fat-wheeled cars that whined from the television screen when someone was watching a rally. I walked the beach, hoping to find the Unicorn, worrying and worrying. It was all I could do to walk. I wanted to lie down near the heat of a rock, out of the wind but in the sun, and sleep, knowing that there would never be anything ever to worry about.
How unrealistic, Leslie, I told myself. The whole world functioned on the concept of worrying. If you didn’t lock your house, someone was bound to break in. If you didn’t put away for a rainy day, you would have nothing for emergencies. If you didn’t set your alarm, you would never wake up in time for work. If you didn’t work hard, you wouldn’t get a raise. If you didn’t dress nicely, men would never notice you. It was all a big headache. The worry headache, plastered to our foreheads from the moment we looked out of the bars of our cribs and made our first stabs at how to think.
I came upon the Unicorn with the big claws of the worry headache ripping deeply into my face.
“You look bad,” he said.
“You’re right, I do.” My shoulders were bare in my tank top and suddenly the sea wind felt cold.
“Don’t tell me,” said the Unicorn. “You broke up with Mr. Wonderful.”
“We didn’t,” I said. “But we had this … I guess you might call it a fight.”
“A fight? You mean—you yelled at one another?”
“We didn’t exactly do that. But he was pretty accusing. And I started it by accusing him of something.”
“Tisk, tisk,” said the Unicorn. A rip gaped from the knee of his gray jeans. His sneakers were, as usual, untied.
I told him about the fax log and my macro theory. He listened, tracing his finger down a scratch in the arm of his chair. “Well,” he said finally.
I waited. “Well, what?”
The Unicorn squinted into the sun. “Potato anger.”
I stared at him. “What?”
“Potato anger. What did you say the guy’s name was?”
“Kevin.”
“And what’s his last name?”
“Mulcahy.”
The Unicorn nodded. “Definitely potato anger.”
“I don’t get it,” I said. “What are you talking about?”
He yawned, leaning back. “It’s that Irish potato anger. They’re mad at the world for the potato blight.”
I frowned, tracing a circle in the sand with my shoe. Was that it? “He went on a rampage,” I said slowly. “The watch, the car, the fancy restaurants, the house.”
“Potato madness,” said the Unicorn.
I stared at him. “Do you know grammar?” I asked.
He raised his eyebrow. “Some.”
“What’s the word for a word that means something and its opposite?”
The Unicorn flattened his palms on the arms of his chair and gazed out at the water. “Contronym.”
“Like cleave,” I said. “Cleave means stick and pull apart.”
“Fast,” said the Unicorn. “Quickly moving and firmly fixed.” His eyes met mine, their centers deep and still. “Aloha,” he said quietly. “Hello and goodbye.”
“Oh, my God!” I yelled. “He used to say that all the time!”
“Who did?”
“Geoff.”
“Oh,” said the Unicorn. “Geoff.”
Sheddo, I thought. Shadow. Form but no form.
He was studying the horizon, the strip where the drago
n’s skin met the sheet of blue and the white paint of the mares’ tails gushed across the sky.
“Tell me the polarity theory,” I said.
He turned his face to mine, the sun reflecting golden in his squint. “You already know it.”
“I do?”
He nodded. “You just said it. One thing and its opposite.”
I deepened the trough I was making with my foot in the sand. “That’s not fair,” I said. “You’re doing it again. You always leave me in the dark.”
“The dark?”
I nodded. I felt peeved. I didn’t know if it was a real feeling or an act.
“Oh,” said the Unicorn. He rocked slightly in the chair. The ocean billowed gently in front of us, swelling and settling with the stirrings of its soundless, dark-blue life. He recited in a soft voice. “Day after day, day after day, we stuck, nor breath nor motion; as idle as a painted ship upon a painted ocean. Water, water, everywhere, and all the boards did shrink; water, water, everywhere, nor any drop to drink.”
“I’ve heard that before,” I said, letting the lines sink in.
“The Rime of the Ancient Mariner.” The Unicorn planted his Reeboks in the sand as the front legs of the chair thudded into their hollows. “The punishment. For killing the albatross.”
“Who killed the albatross?”
“The mariner.”
“What for?”
The Unicorn shrugged. “He felt like it.”
The sand in my trough was a deep dark brown. “Was that polarity?” I asked.
The Unicorn stroked the wood of the chair. “You might say so.”
I filled my trough up with the sand I had dug out. I pressed hard with my foot, packing down the wet granules. The surface of the trough stayed uneven and bumpy. You could see just where my shoe had been. Again, I felt peeved. This time it was real.
The Shadow Man Page 26