“In return,” he said, inclining his head, making his thick, wavy hair fall over one shoulder, “I would like to take your photo.”
I raise my eyebrows. “How?”
“However you like. However you are comfortable.” He grins, and there is a devastating dimple in one cheek. “I swear I will not ask you to take off your clothes.”
“Oh.” I’m disappointed, and am embarrassed when I realize it. I gulp some wine, feeling like every cliché in the known universe, and, flustered, I stand up. “That would be fine. I mean, the photos, not the—”
I stop, and for some reason, I’m laughing. At myself, at the situation, at everything that is so wrong and stupid about my life right this minute. My hair falls forward, covering my face, and I swing it back, over my shoulder, a defense, because I know people look at that hair instead of me. “Sorry,” I say. “I guess I got a little flustered.”
“Forgive me.” He stands, too, puts down his wine. “I did not mean to embarrass you. But …” Earnestly, he puts his hands in his back pockets and I see in the gesture his youth. “Let me tell you a little truth. I am here in this neighborhood because when I came looking for a house to rent, I saw a very beautiful woman standing in that beautiful light, and I wanted to take her picture very, very much. So I must seem young and foolish to you, but I am sincere.”
“Who did you see?”
He takes out one hand and touches a length of my hair, as if it is something rare and precious. “You,” he says, as if it is obvious.
He is, without a doubt, the most beautiful man I have ever seen in my life. It’s like he’s not even real. Those cheekbones and hair and smooth skin, the Continental way he has about him—
“If I let you take my picture,” I say, “will you let me take yours?”
A quirk of a grin, tilting one side of his mouth. “How?” he says, echoing my question.
“However you like.”
“Even nude?” His nostrils flare at this boldness.
“Especially.”
He laughs, and takes my hand, pulling me down to the wine we’ve left sitting on a low table. “Time enough for photos. Tonight, let’s play chess and tell stories, hmm?”
“Maybe I could practice my rusty Spanish.”
“Sin disputa,” he says. Without question.
* * *
By the time I go home, three hours later, I’m flushed and hot with wine, with the dashing Angel’s flirtatious ways. We played chess and talked of his travels and my new-old desire to study Spanish. I’m humming Spanish guitar as I open the front door.
Annie is on the couch. “Where have you been?”
“Hi!” I drift over and kiss her head. “I didn’t know you’d be home so early or I would have left a note.”
“The car was here,” she persists. “You couldn’t have gone too far. Jade said she hadn’t seen you.”
I peel off my coat and drape it over the back of a chair. “Did I worry you? I’m sorry.”
“Mom.” She stands up and her arms are crossed hard on her chest. “Dad called three times. I didn’t know what to tell him.”
I strip off my shoes, pleased that I wasn’t home for once. “Did he say what he wanted?”
“No, just that he wanted to talk.”
“I’ll call him tomorrow, then.” Yawning, I ask, “Did you talk to him?”
“Mom.”
“Yes, my dear?”
“Where were you?”
“Next door.”
Her breath huffs out of her throat. “That’s what I thought. That’s disgusting, Mother! He’s too young for you.” She covers her face. “Oh, my God! Next you’ll be wanting to meet my friends from school.”
I laugh. “Well, now that you mention it, Nathan is a very sexy boy. He’s nineteen, right?”
“Mom, that is not funny!”
The lovely red glow of the evening is a bubble around me. “You need to lighten up, Annie.”
She makes a noise halfway between a scream and groan. “This is what kids do not want, okay? To think about their parents and sex. I mean, Dad forced me to, but I don’t want to see this with you. It’s gross.”
Recklessly, I say, “You can look away, then, because I’m not putting myself on a shelf to make you comfortable. You are one part of my life, and the most important, but I have a right to live as a woman, too.”
“Even if the whole neighborhood is laughing at you for having an affair with a sleazy Spanish gigolo? It’s pathetic!”
Heat creeps up my face, and I know she can see it under my egg-white skin. “First of all, it’s none of your business. Second, I’m not having an affair, but it may surprise you to discover that not everyone thinks your mother is over the hill. Third—” I can’t think of a third. “I really don’t understand why you’re so angry.”
“Because Dad called and called. I think he really wanted to talk to you! And what if this was the one chance to get it all back again, and now it’s all ruined?” She bursts into tears.
“Oh, Annie.” I put my arms around her, cradle her to me. She’s still so much smaller than me. Like my mother, she’s short and sturdy. She flings her arms around me and sobs into my shoulder and I stroke her hair and whisper soft things. When she slows down, I take her to the kitchen for a cup of tea. She slumps at the table and I busy myself with the pot and measuring leaves.
“When I’m keeping Minna,” I say quietly, “the thing I always think about is how easy it is to keep her safe at this age. Put the poisons up high, cover the electrical outlets, keep breakables out of reach.” I sigh and turn. “I wish I could keep you safe from all the things that are going to hurt you the rest of your life, and I can’t.”
“I just wish you guys could fix this.”
“I know. But I don’t know that it’s fixable.” Tears spring to my eyes and I blink. “Maybe you’re going to have to love your dad as he is, and let me find out what my new life looks like.”
“Maybe you should just call him and find out what he wanted?”
Gently, I say, “Not tonight, honey. I promise I’ll call him tomorrow.” The kettle whistles. “Now, let’s have some tea and forget all this, huh? Want to play some spades?”
Her mouth is sad, but she nods. “Might as well.”
* * *
Upstairs, alone in my bed later, I touch my ribs, feel the skin over them. Pull back the curtain protecting my daughter from her mother’s sensuality and remember the evening. My body sings with an agitation I have not felt in a long, long time. A sense of possibility. We only played chess and drank wine and listened to the Spanish music he played. That was all. But my mind is alive now with shimmery moments out of it, and I replay some of them over and over. His head ducked the slightest bit, so he had to cut a glance upward at me, his irises golden and full of mischief. A moment when I leaned forward a little and knew he was admiring the shape of my profile. That last minute before I put on my coat, when he moved a little too close and smiled down at me, thanking me for coming. I hugged him impulsively and it went on too long and I suspect if I had not turned my head at just the right instant, he would have kissed me.
The ache of it burns against my ribs now, down in my liver, in my kidneys.
I will never sleep tonight.
He is too young for me. I am probably imagining that he is attracted to me. But it doesn’t matter. I love this feeling in my limbs, in my organs, in my throat, this sense of wanting someone else, even for a little while. It gives me relief from wanting the one I cannot have anymore.
I live the moments again. One more time. His hand on my neck. Mine on his hard arm.
Sleep sneaks in, unnoticed, and carries me away where the moments can become dreams.
Over the face of the cistern
the gypsy girl swayed.
Green flesh, hair of green,
with eyes of cold silver.
An icicle of the moon
suspends her above the water.
The night became as intimate
>
as a little square.
“Ballad of the Sleepwalker”
FEDERICO GARCÍA LORCA,
Translated by STEPHEN SPENDER AND J. L. GILI
21
TRUDY
Saturday morning, Angel shows up at my door before I’ve put on my normal clothes. He has his worn rucksack over his shoulder and a very sexy leather bomber jacket that doesn’t look sleazy, just European, and his camera bag.
I open the door, trying to face the fact that I’m much too old for him and he needs to see me as I am, in my old sweats and the T-shirt I slept in, without a scrap of makeup on my ghost face. “Hi, Angel.” I push open the screen. “Come in.”
“No, no. I am unable—I have a paying job this morning, but I brought you something.” He gives me a box of film—three rolls. “Shoot them, then bring me the pictures, huh?”
“Let me give you some money!”
He smiles, waves a hand. “Just enjoy it.”
“Okay.”
Unfortunately, it’s what I think of as a “Carolyn Day,” which means I can’t stop thinking about this woman who somehow landed my husband when I wasn’t looking. Everywhere I go, I see women who look like her, who make me do a double-take. Women who have her hair, who move like her, who wear the same kind of clothes. It’s exhausting, not to mention my neck hurts from whipping around so often.
I take their pictures, wondering how long it will take me to get over all of this. The rest of my bloody life?
In the evening, I have a date with Jade. She talked me into it two days ago. I’m nervous, haunted by the Carolyn images—which I cannot explain. Why today, when I’m feeling so much more positive?—and it’s good to be getting ready, even if I am worried about having that hard, just-divorced-pissed-and-ready-for-revenge look. The long mirror shows how thin I’ve become over the past few months, the collarbone too prominent, and it doesn’t do anything good for my face. My hair, so long and unstyled, suddenly seems in that category, but it’s not like I can chop it all off for a night on the town, although I’m nearly sick enough with nerves to do it. I pick out the new green India cotton blouse and a pair of jeans, a simple leather jacket to go over it. Looking in the mirror, I think I look okay. Not young anymore, but everybody gets older, right? So do men. A man my age might think I look good.
Annie is not thrilled that I’m going out, so I’m not going to ask her advice. She’ll like my outfit only if it covers me from neck to ankles. Loosely.
The doorbell rings and I rush to answer it, thinking it’s Jade. Instead, it’s Rick. “Hi,” he says. “I forgot to call first. Is this a bad time?”
Attaching an earring, I back away from the door, letting him come in, then sit on the couch to put on my boots. I’m careful not to look at him too closely, see the weary lines around his mouth that make me want to hug him, rub his back for a minute.
“What’s up?” I ask, tugging on the new ankle-high brown boots that match my coat. The heels make me even taller, but I’m going out with Jade, so who cares? Probably, I think to myself with a quick frown, all my trouble is for nothing, since no man will see me while I’m standing next to the Stun Gun.
“You going out or something?” Rick asks.
“Yeah, me and Jade.” I lift an eyebrow, half smile. “Should be interesting.”
He nods. “Guess my timing is pretty bad, then. Maybe I can catch you tomorrow.”
“For?”
“Nothing. Just talk or something. Something normal, maybe?” He sighs. “I don’t know, Trudy.”
I put my hands in my lap, look at him. “You look so tired. Are you taking your vitamins?”
“Yeah.” He leans on the wall, hands in his coat pockets. Athena comes out of the kitchen and trips over to him, rubbing his ankles. “Hey, you,” he says, picking her up to scrub her ears. “I was thinking about getting a kitty.”
“Really?” We often had discussions on too many cats. I’m a sucker for all the lost felines of the world, I have to admit, and sometimes the numbers have crept up to three—or, for a small stretch once, four—but I’ve been good about it lately. Two, but no more.
“You don’t realize how nice it is to have a cat in your lap until you don’t have one anymore.”
“I think you should, then. Lots of homeless cats all the time.”
He rubs Athena’s ear. “Where you guys going? The Pub?”
“No. Not her style. Some new place downtown. She’s gone there a couple of times with friends from work.”
“I know which one. Secretary place, full of ferns and stuff.”
I don’t ask how he knows about it. Carolyn is a bartender around the corner. She probably has aspirations to being a secretary. Like me.
Probably not.
Suddenly, my gut is on fire with a certain brand of anxiety or anticipation that got me into a fair bit of trouble through the first part of all this. It makes me want to storm into her workplace and make a fool of her, as she has made a fool of me. To paper the walls and windows around the bar with her racy, detailed e-mail letters to my husband, which he read in my own bedroom.
Jade saves me from starting a fight by popping in the front door. “Hey!” she says cheerfully, bringing a scent of exotic perfume with her. She’s simply dressed, in a red silk T-shirt with a neckline that shows off her beautiful, young cleavage, black jeans, black boots. That hair is a wild, luscious tangle on her shoulders. “You ready?”
I stand, grab my purse. Rick walks out with us. “Have a good time.”
“Oh, yeah!” Jade laces her arm through mine. “We’re gonna raise some hell.” She wiggles the fingers on her free hand over my shoulder. “Have a good night!”
And it’s stupid, but I feel guilty and sad that he’s standing on the porch, watching us go, his hands loose at his sides, like he’s winded.
I look back. “If you want, I’ll help you pick out a cat tomorrow.”
He nods, once.
“Girl,” Jade says close to my neck, her arm still firmly looped in mine, “don’t you dare start feeling bad. He deserves it. Don’t forget that.”
“You’re right.”
The nightclub is not terribly crowded so early, and we find a decent table a little bit away from the bar. There are a lot of young professional types drinking wine and margaritas and cherry-colored martinis. Jade orders one, calling it a Jolly Rancher. I order Chardonnay, but she insists I taste the martini. “It does taste just like candy,” I say, “but that’s not what martinis are supposed to be about.”
She grins. “Loosen up, Grandma. This is a new century. Out with the old, in with the new.”
Trouble is, I am a grandmother, and I know the answer to what a martini is—dry and perfect for sipping. They are James Bond and Las Vegas, circa 1963, and a lost world of diamonds and elegance and things I never believed in, but some people did. Making them cherry seems somehow disrespectful.
There is no one my age in the place. I find myself thinking of Carolyn too much, wanting to slip out and go sit in the dark, old place where she works, with its bluesy jukebox and pool tables. A lot more likely to connect with somebody there than here. Except that I’d have to deal with Carolyn herself, probably, and that would be a drag.
Maybe it’s because I’m thinking about her so hard, but there is a woman who walks in just then who reminds me of her. Same long, strawlike hair, same kind of clothes, same slightly defensive body language.
I sip my wine with narrowed eyes. “That’s kind of what Rick’s new girlfriend looks like,” I say.
She’s satisfyingly shocked. “Gross! What is he thinking?”
“Who knows?”
“You want to talk about it?” Jade says. “It’s obviously getting to you right now.”
“What is there to say?”
She leans in over her drink. “How did it happen? Did he just come to you one day and say he was in love with somebody else and he was leaving?”
“Not exactly.” I give a short, humorless laugh. “He’d just
been acting weird for a couple of months. I wasn’t sure what was going on, but I thought it was connected to grief issues—you know his best friend, Joe, died, right?”
“The motorcycle guy? Oh, no.”
“Yeah, that’s him. It’s been two years now, and his mother died, too. So it was a lot, you know? I was trying to follow his lead, let him work through it all.” I sigh. “Not the best course of action, as it turns out.”
“Oh, you don’t know that, Trudy.” She touches my hand. “It doesn’t have anything to do with you.”
“Maybe not.”
“Anyway?…”
“Anyway, I kept getting hang-up phone calls. A couple of times, he acted really weird when he came home from being out with the guys. Honestly, I didn’t even suspect another woman.” Suddenly my wrist aches with a violent pain and I shake my arm. A steel wall comes sliding down over my heart with a clunk. I shake my head, squeeze my eyes tight. “It was ugly. I don’t want to talk about it. Another time, okay?”
“All right. We’re here to have a good time.”
She raises her glass and I toast it. We drink.
* * *
Hours later, long after I switched to club soda with lime so I could drive us home, we leave the nightclub. It’s been heady for Jade. Her cheeks are flushed with the power of it, all the men talking and talking and talking to her all night.
I, on the other hand, have left whatever self-esteem I might have owned back there in a melted puddle on the table. I was invisible, not just because I was next to Jade, but because I was way too old for that crowd. It was humiliating after a while, the way their eyes would skitter over mine, carefully look away, as if I might leap up with my crone-like hands and snatch one of their young bodies home to devour in my bed.
We emerge into the windy night, and on impulse, I drag on Jade’s coat sleeve. “Let’s take a little detour.”
She gives me a look. “Am I gonna like this?”
“Sure. Why not?” My heart is suddenly pounding in an exalted sort of rhythm. Adrenaline. Better than nothing. Sure better than sorrow.
The street is dark between the bars, and the wind is kicking leaves and cigarette butts and an empty Subway cup over the sidewalk. We pass a hole-in-the-wall bar with ancient doors that have round windows set into them, and Jade says, “Huh. It looks like a saloon, doesn’t it?”
The Goddesses of Kitchen Avenue: A Novel Page 14