After a moment she called out, very quietly, “Don’t stand there,” which he interpreted as meaning off with the tuxedo coat and after some hesitation the white shirtfront and collar and after another long while, unlatching his suspenders and folding them and his pants over a chair that he found in the shadowed room, lit only by a small nightlight and a lamp on the far side of the bed. Standing there in a half shirt and his black socks and underwear, he wavered and dodged about going in one direction, then the other, moving toward the bed and backing away, with no map, no guide, no late-night instructions.
“Are you where you’re supposed to be?” she asked quietly behind the door. He gazed at the bed.
“Are you?” she prompted, almost inaudibly.
He went to the bed and said, “I think so,” and got in and one of the wire springs sang softly.
“You are,” she said.
The bathroom door opened. A tall silhouette was there. Before he could see her clearly, the light went out and a shadow crossed the room.
“Eyes shut?”
He nodded, numbly. He felt her weight upon the bed and heard the sheets part and whisper as she drifted in.
“Open your eyes.”
He opened them but it was the same as on the train, where, turned away, he saw only a silhouette cutout, and here, though she faced toward him, she blocked the lamp so the lamp made her a hillock of shadow with no features. He tried to find her face, he knew it was there, but his eyes wouldn’t focus.
“Good evening,” she said.
“Evening.”
And after a moment as she gained her breath and he did the same, she said, “My, that was a long trip.”
“Too long. I could hardly wait—”
“Don’t say,” she said.
He looked at the long shadow and the pale face with dim outlines of features.
“But …”
“Don’t say,” she said.
He held his breath for he knew she would go on in a moment. She did.
“Teachers say if you write a story you must never name what you’re trying to write. Just do it. When it’s over you’ll know what you’ve done. So … don’t say.”
It was the most she had said all evening. Now she fell silent, a shadow against the light. And now the lamp went dark without, it seemed, her turning to touch it. He saw the merest gesture in the shadows. Something soft fell to the floor. It was a moment before he realized it was her gloves. She had taken off her gloves.
Surprised, he sensed that the only thing that he still wore was his gloves. But when he tried to work them off he found that he had already tossed them aside in the dark. Now his hands were revealed and vulnerable. He pulled back.
He opened his mouth but she stopped him.
“Don’t say anything.”
He felt her move a small move, toward him.
“Say only one thing.”
He nodded, wondering what it would be.
“Tell me,” she said very quietly. He could not make out her face, it was still like the face in the window glass on the night train, traveling from station to station, a dark silhouette fixed between late-night TV channels, and pale and hidden.
“Tell me,” she said. He nodded. “How old are you?”
His mouth gaped. He felt his eyes panic in his head. She repeated the question, implying the answer. Suddenly he absolutely knew the right and amazing truth. He shut his eyes, cleared his throat, and at last let his tongue move.
“I’m …” he said.
“Yes?”
“I’m eighteen, nineteen in August, five feet eight, one hundred fifty pounds, brown hair, blue eyes. Unattached.”
He imagined he heard her very softly echo every word that he had said.
He felt her shift, weightless, closer and still closer.
“Say that again,” she whispered.
IN MEMORIAM
All the way home that late afternoon, driving through the winding streets, enjoying the weather, admiring the jacaranda trees and the violet snow they were letting down on the lawns, he noticed, but merely from the corner of his eyes, the apparatuses in front of almost every other garage. But they passed behind him without being named. They were familiar but there was no special reason to give them notice.
The basketball hoops and boards above the garages, waiting for games.
Nothing special. No particular connotations.
Until he drove up in front of his house in the autumn weather and saw his wife standing, arms folded, out on the sidewalk, watching a young man up on a stepladder, his hands busy with a screwdriver and hammer. Neither noticed him until he banged the car. The young man looked down and his wife looked over as he gave a surprising cry.
“What the hell goes on?” he shouted, and was amazed at his own emotion. His wife gave a calm response.
“Why, we’re just taking it down, is all. It’s been up there for years, and …”
The husband glared up along the ladder.
“Get down off there,” he said.
“Why?” his wife said.
“I don’t have to have a reason, dammit, get down!”
The young man nodded, rolled his eyeballs to heaven, and climbed down.
“Now put the ladder away!” the husband said.
“You don’t have to shout,” his wife said.
“Am I? Well. Just put the ladder away. Thanks.”
“That’s more like it,” she said.
The young man carried the ladder into the open garage and left, quietly, in his car.
The husband and wife, during all this, stood in the middle of the driveway gazing up at the basketball hoop.
When the car was gone, she said, “Now what’s all this about?”
“You know!” he cried, and lowered his voice. “Hell.” He looked at his hands, on which had fallen a surprise of tears. “What’s this?”
“If you don’t know, no one does.” She softened her voice. “Come inside.”
“Not until we finish.”
“The ladder’s gone and the hoop stays up. For now, anyway.”
“No, not for now,” he said, doggedly. “From now on.”
“But why?”
“I want it there. Just in case.”
“In case what?”
“There’s got to be one place in all the damned world that’s his. There’s nothing out at the graveyard. There’s nothing anywhere in this country. Nothing in Saigon, especially Saigon. So, when I look up at this, hell, you know what I mean.”
She looked up at the net and the hoop.
“Next thing you’ll put flowers—”
“Don’t make jokes!”
“I’m sorry. It’s just—you won’t let go.”
“Why should I?”
“For your own good.”
“What about his good?”
“I don’t know the answer. Do you?”
“It’ll come. God, I’m sick to my stomach. Where’s the damn ladder, I’ll knock it all down.”
She stared at him so he wandered into the garage and rummaged among newspapers and discovered the basketball, looked out at the hoop, but did not bring the ball out.
She called into the unlit garage.
“You hungry?”
“No,” he said tiredly. “I guess.”
“I’ll fix something.” He heard her walk to the front porch. As the door was shutting, he said, “Thanks.”
He walked out to stand under the hoop and watched the wind shake the net.
“Why?” he said quietly. “Why in hell?”
He glanced along the street west and then along the street east. Down both ways there were garage fronts with basketball boards and hoops, stirred by the same wind, never removed, some for one reason, some for another.
He counted two on one side of the street, and three on the other.
What a great way, he thought, to know what kind of families live in those houses.
He stood for a long while until he felt his wife move behin
d the front screen door, then he shut the garage door and went in.
There was wine with dinner, not often observed. She filled his glass twice and waited.
“Forgive me,” she said at last. “But you do realize, don’t you? He’s never coming back.”
“Don’t!” he said, and pushed his chair back and put his knife and fork down.
“Someone’s got to say it.”
“No they don’t.”
“We said it all before. It’s been years.”
“I don’t care how many years.”
She looked down at her plate and said, “Drink your wine.”
“I will when I feel like it.” At last he picked up the glass. “Anyway, thanks.” He drank.
After a long silence she said, “How much longer will this go on?”
“Now that you’ve started it up again?”
“I didn’t mean to start it up. I just got out the ladder and hired some help.”
“You just didn’t figure, is all.”
“It’s just,” she said, “you haven’t slept well lately. I thought maybe if I—well, I wanted to find a way to help you rest. That’s not so bad, is it? You’re worn out.”
“Am I?” He felt his knees and nodded. “Yes. I am.”
“It must be,” she said, at last, “you’re waiting for something. What?”
“I wish I knew.” He picked up his fork but did not eat. “It’s just last night and the night before I listened.”
“For what?”
“Something. I must have lain there for an hour, just listening. Waiting. But there was nothing.”
“Eat. You’re starving.”
“Yes, but starving for what?”
“Here,” she said. “Finish the wine.”
At bedtime she said, “Try to sleep.”
“You can’t try sleeping, it’s got to happen.”
“Try anyway,” she said. “I worry.” She kissed his cheek and went to the bedroom door.
“I’ll be in in a minute,” he said.
Far across town he heard a single university bell chime midnight, and then one, and then two o’clock. He sat with an unread book in his lap and a new bottle of wine to one side, eyes shut, waiting. The wind outside rose.
Finally when the distant bell sounded three, he got up and walked out the front door and opened the garage. He went in and stood for a long moment, regarding the basketball. He did not carry it out in the light but simply let it sit on the cement floor.
If I leave the garage door open, he thought, that should do it.
He went out and almost glanced up at the net, but thought, Don’t look. Don’t notice. That way, maybe—
He shut his eyes and turned to just stand there in the moonlight, listening, aching to hear, swaying slightly, but not once opening his eyes to look up at the board and the hoop and the net.
The wind shivered in the trees.
Yes, he thought.
A leaf blew across the drive.
Yes, he thought, oh, yes.
A soft sound rose, like someone running a long way off and then, nearer, walking, and then nothing.
And after a while a motion around him and other sounds, some fast, some slow, circling.
Yes, he thought. Oh God yes.
And, eyes shut, he reached out both hands to feel the air, but there was only wind and moonlight.
Yes, he thought. Now.
And again: Now.
And yet again: Now.
At dawn his wife came to sit on his bed. The motion wakened him. He looked up at her face.
“It’s gone,” she said.
“What?”
She glanced away to the front window.
He rose slowly and moved to the window and stared down at the front of the garage.
There was no board, no hoop, no net.
“What happened last night?” she said.
“Something.”
“What?”
“I don’t know. The weather maybe. The moon moving made things move and I asked all of it what?”
His wife waited, her hands in her lap.
“And?”
“Okay, I said, whoever you are, whatever this is, if we play one last game, can I sleep? One last game? I could feel the weather on my face and along my arms. The moon went out and came back. That was the sign. I moved. The weather moved.”
“And then?”
“We played a last game.”
“I thought I heard.” She took a deep breath.
“Who won?”
“We did,” he said.
“You both can’t win.”
“You can. If you try.”
“And you both won.”
“Both.”
She came to stand with him and study the empty garage front.
“Did you take it down?”
“Someone did.”
“I didn’t hear you get the ladder.”
“I must’ve. It was hard climbing up, but even harder climbing down. My eyes kept filling up. I couldn’t see.”
“Where did you put all that stuff?” she said.
“Don’t know. We’ll find it when we least expect.”
“Thank God it’s over.”
“Over, yes, but best of all—”
“What?”
“A tie,” he said.
And repeated, “A tie.”
TÊTE-À-TÊTE
We were walking along the boardwalk in Ocean Park one summer evening, arm in arm, my friend Sid and me, when we saw a familiar sight on one of the benches just ahead, not far from the surf.
“Look,” I said, “and listen.”
We looked and listened.
There was this old Jewish couple, he I would say about seventy and she maybe sixty-five, moving their mouths and hands at the same time, everyone talking, nobody listening.
“I told you more than once,” he said.
“What did you tell? Nothing!” she said.
“Something,” he said, “I’m always telling you something. Of great importance if you’d give a try.”
“Great importance, listen to him!” she said rolling her eyes. “Give me a list!”
“Well, about the wedding …”
“Still the wedding?”
“Sure! The waste, the confusion.”
“Who was confused?”
“I could show you—”
“Don’t show. Look, I’m deaf!”
Et cetera, et cetera.
“I wish I had a tape recorder,” I said.
“Who needs a tape recorder,” Sid replied. “I could say what I just heard. Call me at three in the morning and I’ll quote.”
We moved on. “They’ve been sitting on that same bench every night for years!”
“I believe it,” said Sid. “They’re hilarious.”
“You don’t find it sad?”
“Sad? Come off it! They’re a vaudeville team. I could put them on the Orpheum circuit tomorrow!”
“Not even a little sad?”
“Stop. I bet they’re married fifty years. The yammer started before the wedding and kept going after their honeymoon.”
“But they don’t listen!”
“Hey, they’re taking turns! First hers not to listen, then his. If they ever paid attention they’d freeze. They’ll never wind up with Freud.”
“Why not?”
“They’re letting it all hang out, there’s nothing left to carp or worry about. I bet they get into bed arguing and are asleep with smiles in two minutes.”
“You actually think that?”
“I had an aunt and uncle like that. A few insults shape a long life.”
“How long did they live?”
“Aunt Fannie, Uncle Asa? Eighty, eighty-nine.”
“That long?”
“On a diet of words, distemper almost, Jewish badminton—he hits one, she hits it back, she hits one, he hits it back, nobody wins but, hell, no one loses.”
“I never thought of it that way.”
r /> “Think,” said Sid. “Come on, it’s time for refills.”
We turned and strolled back on this fine summer night.
“And another thing!” the old man was saying.
“That’s ten dozen other things!”
“Who’s counting?” he said.
“Look. Where did I put that list?”
“Lists, who cares for lists?”
“Me. You don’t, I do. Wait!”
“Let me finish!”
“It’s never finished,” Sid observed as we moved on and the great arguments faded in our wake.
Two nights later Sid called and said, “I got me a tape recorder.”
“You mean?”
“You’re a writer, I’m a writer. Let’s trap a little grist for the mills.”
“I dunno,” I said.
“On your feet,” said Sid.
We strolled. It was another fine mild California night, the kind we don’t tell Eastern relatives about, fearful they might believe.
“I don’t want to hear,” he said.
“Shut up and listen,” she said.
“Don’t tell me,” I said, eyes shut. “They’re still at it. Same couple. Same talk. Shuttlecock’s always in the air over the net. No one’s on the ground. You really going to use your tape recorder?”
“Dick Tracy invented, I use.”
I heard the small handheld machine snap as we moved by, slowly.
“What was his name? Oh, yeah. Isaac.”
“That wasn’t his name.”
“Isaac, sure.”
“Aaron!”
“I don’t mean Aaron, the older brother.”
“Younger!”
“Who’s telling this?”
“You. And bad.”
“Insults.”
“Truths you could never take.”
“I got scars to prove it.”
“Hot dog,” said Sid as we glided on with their voices in his small device.
And then it happened. One, two, three, like that.
Quite suddenly the bench was empty for two nights.
On the third night I stopped in a small kosher delicatessen and talked, nodding at the bench. I didn’t know the names. Sure, they said, Rosa and Al, Al and Rosa. Stein, they said, that was the name. Al and Rosa Stein, there for years, never missed a night. Now, Al will be missed. That was it. Passed away Tuesday. The bench sure looks empty, right, but what can you do?