“Welcome to the land of the living.” Walter enters smiling but he is dismayed to see a cigarette in her hand. “You’re smoking.” She is sitting in her old spot on the radiator.
“Dad. You’re so observant.” She crosses her legs and tilts her head the way she always does when she gets ready to talk. “The first one always gives me an anxiety attack,” she explains. “I have to get it over with fast.” Her hair is newly washed and combed but she is still in her bathrobe. “Hey, thanks for the croissants. You went to so much trouble, Dad.”
Walter beams. There is no detectable edge in Julie’s voice this morning. Walter thinks maybe it would be safe to ask a few questions, draw her out a little. Of course, he must proceed cautiously.
“How are you feeling?” A nice slow beginning.
“Fine.” Julie blows a smoke ring. “How about you?”
“Fine. Tea this morning?” he asks and she nods.
“Thanks. Tea is great.”
He puts a tea bag in one mug and measures instant coffee into another. The flame is already on under the kettle and he picks it up to make sure there is enough water inside. “Not much sleep, right?” Walter fills the sugar bowl and finds a clean spoon. Just the gentlest of probes.
“Dad, I’m fine.”
“If anything is bothering you, you know your old dad is here to listen.”
“Thanks, Dad. I appreciate it.”
“Because you’ve seemed a bit down in the mouth of late. Up at night and so forth.”
“Sometimes a person has to think things through alone. You understand that, don’t you? Some things are hard to talk about.” She reaches into her pocket for a comb and combs her hair straight back from her face, her eyes half-closing as she does so. Such a graceful gesture. Sometimes she reminds him so much of her mother.
“Of course, of course.” Walter pours the water into the cups. “How about sugar?” Julie shakes her head. He drops two spoonsful of sugar into his coffee, then brings both cups to the table and sits down. “What things? Think what things through?” It is like a tic, fatherhood.
Julie rolls her eyes, swinging her legs back to the floor. “I’m going to get dressed, Dad. Thanks for the tea.” But she leaves it on the table. After a moment Walter stands up, pours his coffee away, and rinses the mug. He puts the croissants back in the bag and folds it up tight, leaving it out on the table. He doesn’t know what to do about her tea.
Ten minutes later Julie comes back. Walter is standing in front of the window, lost in thought. Well, maybe not thought exactly, more like the absence of thought.
“Hi,” she says, and kisses his cheek. “Are you going to this? It’s tonight.” She is holding an invitation in her hand. She sits on the radiator again.
Walter looks at it and shakes his head. “I never go to reunions.”
“Why not?”
He shrugs. “I just don’t.”
“You can’t stay cooped up here for the rest of your life.”
“I’m not cooped up. This is my home. My castle.”
“But listen, Dad, it might be fun.”
“I don’t want to have fun,” he says. “I have plenty of fun.”
“It would be like an adventure, Dad. Really. I think you should go.”
“I don’t want an adventure, Jule,” he says. “I like my life the way it is.”
Julie points to the icebox. “Dad, listen to me. You know what’s in there? Same old stuff. You eat the same stuff. You eat it off the same plate. You use the exact same knife and fork every night and then you wash it and put it away. You don’t even use different cups in the morning. You don’t call anybody, you don’t see anybody.”
Walter speaks after a pause. “At my age I have habits.” He would like to add something to that, but nothing comes to mind.
“Why don’t you go?” Julie stands with her arms folded. “What possible harm could it do you to go?” He mumbles something noncommital.
“What?”
“I said I haven’t seen these people in thirty years.”
“You haven’t seen any people, Pop. You don’t even go three blocks in either direction.”
“That’s just not true. I went to Zabar’s this morning,” says Walter.
“You’re a hermit, Dad,” says Julie.
“I’m not a hermit. I’m a recluse.” He looks at her but she isn’t smiling. “I go out. I take walks.”
“Walks don’t cut it, Dad. You need to see people.”
“I do see people. I will be seeing Grandma this afternoon. Have you spoken to your mother today?” asks Walter, changing the subject.
“No.” Julie shakes her head with vehemence.
“You know your mother came here last week and we had a nice meal together. I don’t know whether she mentioned it to you. It was just before you came back for spring break.” His heart is beating fast for no reason. “She wound up spending the night. There was a bad storm. I believe we will be having a drink together this afternoon.” Walter searches his daughter’s face for clues but Julie is frowning. “I wonder if your mother isn’t a little lonely.”
Julie gets off the radiator and stands next to him at the kitchen window. Walter puts his arm around her shoulders. “I love you, Dad,” she says, and buries her face in his shirt.
“Well of course you do, Julie,” he says, surprised at her tears. “I wouldn’t have it any other way.” He smooths her hair as she cries against him. “I love you too, Julie, what’s the matter. Tell your old daddy, maybe I can help.”
She shakes her head and dries her eyes on her bathrobe. She points down at the seedy hotel across the street. “They’re out again. Look. Your favorites.” She smiles at him. “I’ve got to blow my nose,” she says, and hurries down the hall. Walter looks back out the window, where several men have come out on the roof. They are Mexicans, Walter thinks. Or maybe Guatemalans. They have guitars with them, and they are dragging their painted chairs.
ELLIE NEVER SAID she’d been unhappy. She had always seemed happy, or at least happy enough. Whatever happiness was, and Walter found he wasn’t sure himself. Certainly nothing you could pursue. Anyway, it wasn’t happiness she’d been after, she had made that much clear. She wanted to be alone, that was all. “I want to be alone. I have never done anything by myself.” Sometimes she said it with an accent, like Greta Garbo. But that was before it had gathered its full head of steam.
“I’ll rent an office,” said Walter at first, while Ellie’s tone was still apologetic. “I’ll get out of your hair. You can be alone all day long.” But that was not what she meant. “How about vacation? Take a trip by yourself somewhere?” Ellie shook her head.
“I just want to be by myself, Walt, I can’t explain it.” Walter could hardly hear her.
“Can we rent you a cottage for the summer? You go by yourself and I won’t come unless you invite me?” She shook her head again, it was so difficult to know what she really meant.
“I don’t want to feel guilty thinking about you waiting by the phone,” she began softly. They were sitting in the kitchen. Walter was still in his bathrobe and slippers. He looked down at the tablecloth. This foolish tablecloth he had given her on her fortieth birthday, the map of Hawaii, where they had never been but jokingly planned to retire. “Only twenty-five years until Aloha,” Walter’s card had read.
“I just want to be by myself, Walt. I can’t explain it.”
He leaned forward. “Is there something I’m doing wrong?” Walter’s throat was tight. “Something I could do better?” And here he felt Ellie soften, as if she might have fallen weeping into his arms, but instead she pushed her chair back and stood up. It was one of those moments where life could go either way.
“No, Walter. It’s me. There’s something wrong with me.” She ran her hands through her hair. Ellie’s skin was always very white, even in summer. White skin, dark, dark hair. His beautiful wife. Drifting away. Out of reach.
“For how long?” Walter asked.
“I don??
?t know. I really don’t know.” She tried to smile at him.
“A month?” She couldn’t meet his eyes. “More than a month?”
Ellie didn’t answer. She picked up a book. She touched its spine. She put it down.
“How long, Ellie. I deserve an answer.”
“There’s a sublet in the Village. A year.”
“A year!”
“But I don’t know if that’s how long,” she added. “I might be home next weekend, who knows, with my tail between my legs.”
“What about the child?”
“She’s in college, Walt. We’ll still be her parents. But she’s getting to be her own self now. Besides. It might not be forever. Think of it as a vacation.” She smiled again, weakly. “A vacation from the harridan.”
“I don’t want a vacation,” Walter said, as close to raising his voice as he had ever gotten. “You are my vacation.”
“I need to do something else. I can’t stay here another second,” she said, beginning to cry.
“You’re not my vacation, Ellie,” Walter amended, patting her back as she leaned against his shoulder.” You’re my whole life.”
But that was even worse.
He had gone away the day before Ellie packed up, unable to watch her fill the boxes, unable to bear the excitement she couldn’t hide. She hadn’t even taken much. Her clothes. Her bureau swept clean of clutter. Two years ago now. And where did she go? Not the deserts of Arizona, not an abandoned dairy farm in Pennsylvania, not an orchard in upstate New York. She went downtown to Bleecker Street, an apartment across from a butcher shop with rabbits hanging upside down in its windows.
ELLIE ANSWERS THE phone on the third ring.
“Hello?”
“Ellie, it’s me, Walter.”
“Yes. I recognized your voice, Walt.” Is she laughing at him? It is unnerving the way women find things funny.
“Are we getting together today?”
“We are, Walt. This afternoon.”
“I wasn’t sure if I had the time right.”
“Five okay?”
“Perfect.” So he hadn’t dreamed it. “Is everything all right?”
“I’m okay, Walt.” Her voice has such a strange note in it.
“Because I’m worried about Julie.”
Silence.
“She seems so unlike herself. Cranky and so forth. Have you noticed anything?”
“She’s nineteen, Walter. Old enough to have her own problems.”
“But what could be wrong? I wondered if you had any insights.”
“Whatever it is, Walt, she’ll either tell you about it or she won’t. That’s about all I can say.” Ellie’s voice has that dreadful curtness in it.
“Well,” he finishes up, “I will see you this afternoon.” Three seconds later the phone rings. It is Ellie again.
“I’m sorry for being so short.”
“That’s all right,” says Walter, but he is wary, like a burn victim.
“We’ll talk later, Walt.” Her voice is gentle, gentler than he has ever heard it before.
Walter hangs up with a nervous feeling in the pit of his stomach.
IT: I’m sorry, I was distracted for a moment. Did you like the memory?
HE: It was lovely but somewhat melancholy for me and I would prefer not to discuss it. Would it be impertinent of me to ask you some questions about yourself, your purpose here, and things in general?
IT: Well, not exactly impertinent, but to a Superior Being like myself a dialogue with a being of your kind has only very limited interest. But you may begin.
HE: So first, what sort of thing are you?
IT: Oh, well, it’s a little hard to explain what I am in terms you could understand. My sort evolved— though under very different conditions—as yours did, from the organic world. But after a while our command of science enabled us to shed our biological forms and transform ourselves into almost invulnerable machines. Marvelous as they were— they had powerful bodies and minds, and a great emotional range— we found them limiting in the long run, and it became our principal goal to free our Selves from the bondage of a material body. Finally what was achieved was a purely mental Entity that could control any organic or inorganic machine in any way consistent with the machine’s construction. I am such an entity. Each of us is an individual, subject only to its own needs and purposes.
HE: I am very curious to know what those needs and what those purposes might be. But before that, tell me, are you subject to the laws of nature as we know them, or can you do anything?
Eleven o’clock now. Walter is walking down Broadway, past the Cathedral Market with its bins of fruits and vegetables, past the old Woolworth’s, which somehow manages to hold its own amidst the cropping up of new sneaker stores and Radio Shacks and discount drugstores. He still has more than an hour before he is due at his mother’s, not that time matters to his mother, but Walter likes to be prompt. Perhaps he will drop in at the bookstore. Visit his book. He seems to be going in that direction anyway. Maybe it’s silly, he thinks, pausing outside the New Delhi Restaurant, under the tattered little plastic banners announcing its opening. But some days there are two copies, then other days there are four, then three days later only one. It must be selling nicely, wonder of wonders. And where it had come from, who knew? A kind of miracle. Three years ago he had sat down with the window open and pen and paper and it had more or less appeared on the page. Six months later he’d sent it off and sold it right away. “Dear Mr. Wilson” (the letter had read), “Who are you?” They’d offered him a modest sum and lots of enthusiasm. A sci-fi fairy tale, was how they’d sold it.
Walter walks purposefully the rest of the way to the Single Woman’s Bookstore, so named because a single woman owns and runs it, the heiress to some large fortune, or so Walter assumes. Cooking oil? Department stores? When she first opened the store she served coffee and tiny sandwiches but there are no longer such niceties. Georgia has recently given birth to a son. She is nursing her infant behind the cash register when Walter pushes open the door this morning, the bell tinkling pleasantly as he enters.
“Hello again,” she says cheerfully.
“Hello,” he says cautiously, “pleasant day out there.”
He isn’t always certain he wants to hear what Georgia has to say, she is not a shy woman. Lorenzo, it seems, is the pink result of a one-afternoon stand with a young Con Ed worker who had winked at her. “Want to fuck?” she’d asked him. Walter had blushed the first time Georgia spoke about herself. “Theoretically, this was an immaculate conception,” she’d confided, “in that he was conceived in the shower. Well, perhaps not immaculate per se, but very, very clean. We had it on lukewarm because I know what hot does to a guy’s sperm count. Momma didn’t want a soft-boiled egg. She wanted Lorenzo, didn’t she, angel-face,” she’d continued, planting a kiss on the baby’s head. It was perhaps more than Walter needed to know. Walter was almost afraid to ask what had happened to the young man.
“Where is the father?” he finally did inquire, curiosity getting the better of him.
“Tom? Oh, I ate him,” said Georgia, laughing.
Today Lorenzo nurses, Georgia’s bosom half covered by a green shawl. These sounds of contentment are the most beautiful in the world, thinks Walter, the sounds of a small creature being filled to the very top with milk.
“He’s getting big, isn’t he,” says Walter.
“Momma’s boy,” says Georgia. “He has no choice.”
Walter turns away, planning to drift toward the sciencefiction shelves, when Georgia speaks. “Want to hold him for me a sec? I’ve got to stick a quarter in my meter.” And before Walter has a chance to answer she walks over and thrusts the little creature into his arms.
Walter has forgotten how nice a baby feels against the shoulder, the sweet warm weight, the look of the pursed lips swollen to a pink, impossibly thin blister by suckling. He smiles, Lorenzo in his arms, the baby’s warm breath against the side of his neck, he can fe
el the tiny exhalations. Good Lord, thinks Walter. He walks back and forth patting the baby’s back. He recalls a few strong images of the early days of his marriage. Ellie, hugely pregnant, sitting in the white bentwood rocker, a pot of geraniums flowering on the windowsill behind her. His newborn child, her face pink, her tiny hands balled up in tiny fists. Then Georgia appears, removing Lorenzo, thanking Walter, settling herself behind the counter again. There is a sudden cool place on Walter where the baby was.
“Do you have kids?” Georgia asks, arranging the shawl.
“My daughter is nineteen,” says Walter. “She’s a sophomore in college.” He doesn’t know what to say after that. “I love her very much,” he adds, shyly.
“She must be proud of her old man.”
“What?” Walter blushes. His finger has been touching the spine of his own book. One copy today.
“That’s who you are, isn’t it? Millions of Picnics? I recognized you the first time you came in. You look like Ronald Colman. I liked your book.”
Walter nods. “Well, thank you. It happened pretty late in life so I’m a bit stunned.”
“Late in life? Are you kidding? I’m forty-two with a child. Don’t talk to me about late in life. Late at night, now that’s something else. Two A.M.? God.” She nuzzles Lorenzo’s little face.
“I’m up a good part of the night,” says Walter, before he knows what he is saying. “I see well in the dark.” This is what happens when he talks. He quickly turns his attention to a book on the table in front of him. As he opens it, he backs slowly away, so as to become invisible.
“You looking for anything special?” she asks, startling him.
“Who, me?” Walter wheels around guiltily.
“You. Is there anything I can help with? Anything particular you want?”
“Well, no, actually, I’m just browsing,” he says uncomfortably. “Having a bookstore in the neighborhood is such a pleasure,” he adds, lest she think him rude. Is there anything he wants? He wants his wife back.