“Yeah?”
“It’s too late.” I pick up my purse. “I’m sorry. But I think it will be better if I just go, now.”
“Sam, wait a minute!”
“We’ll talk later, David. But not about this. I’m sorry.”
I am, a little. I walk down the block, thinking of him sitting there. It’s odd; it pains me that his clothes are still so familiar to me. I took the shirt he was wearing to the cleaners many times; I saw the belt and trousers he had on hanging in our closet. I believe I could tell you everything that’s in his pockets. But it will happen soon that I won’t know anymore.
34
Spinach lasagna, King is making for me, a grand Sunday luncheon, and I’m bringing the garlic bread. I spent the day attempting to make it from scratch, but now that it’s out of the oven, I regret the time I spent doing it. It looks awful. I break a piece off the end, taste it. Well, if ever I think about baking bread for a living, I’ll remember this. I dump the loaf into the garbage and head for Franco’s Market, home of Pepperidge Farm.
When I arrive at King’s, he ushers me in with a flourish, bending low at the waist and sweeping a dish towel through the air. He is wearing an apron and, when he stands up straight again, I see that he has drawn on a thin mustache. I smile, reach out to touch it, but he holds his hand up protectively. “Don’t mess it up,” he says. “It took me a long time to get it so realistic-looking.”
His kitchen table has been covered with a red-and-white-checked tablecloth; there are bread sticks in a glass at the center of the table, an antipasto platter, a candle stuck into a Chianti bottle. “Well, this is wonderful,” I say, laughing.
“Thank you. Sit down. Would you like some wine?”
In the afternoon? Well, why not? I nod, pull my chair in close to the table, hold up my glass. He fills it halfway with red wine; then, when I don’t put the glass down, he fills it to the top. This is my favorite restaurant.
“I’m stuffed,” I say. “My stomach hurts.” I am lying on King’s sofa, my shoes off, my empty wineglass at my side.
“Yeah, that’s how I used to feel after every meal,” King says.
“You didn’t eat half as much as I did.”
“Sure I did.”
He’s just being gracious. He’d only had two helpings. “You’re losing quite a bit, aren’t you? I hope you don’t mind my asking. Do you mind my asking?”
“No, of course not. I’ve lost forty pounds. Another twenty, I’ll have to beat Edward off with a stick.”
“Is that what you want to do, lose another twenty?”
“Yeah, I guess.”
“That’s great,” I say. “Although …”
“What?”
“Well, I just want you to know that I think you’re fine the way you are.”
He says nothing, and I look down, feel myself flushing. I shouldn’t have said that. He’s not losing weight for me.
Finally, to break the silence, I ask, “Do you like having no curtains?”
“I never thought of it. Do I need them?”
“I don’t know. No. I like how everything’s so … simple here.”
“I’ve never been much of a decorator. My parents weren’t either. What we did was read. You know, at dinner and everything.”
“Do your parents live near here?”
“No, they died, both within the last couple years. My dad was at a bookstore, looking at an atlas. He’d wanted a new one. And my mom had a heart attack exactly a year later.”
“I’m sorry; I’d thought they were still around.”
“Yeah, I’m sorry, too. Because they would have been really happy. They always wanted me to—”
The doorbell rings and I sit up, slide into my shoes. I don’t know why. I guess I’m afraid it’s Travis, checking up on me. “Why are your shoes off?” he’d say.
But of course it’s not Travis. When King opens the door, I see a willowy blond woman, very attractive, smiling.
“Linda!” King says.
Oh.
“I thought I’d surprise you,” she says, and I hear the confident lilt of flirtation in a relationship that is going well. “What’s on your lip?” she says, reaching up to wipe it away. Then, seeing me, “Oh. You’re busy.”
I stand. “It’s okay. Come on in. I’m Sam. I’m just a friend.” I regret having eaten so much, not having worn mascara.
King steps aside. “Yes, come in.”
Linda enters, but stands by the door. “I can’t stay, really. I just wanted to drop a book off.” She hands a small volume to King, and he smiles, thanks her.
I want a coat like Linda’s. It’s camel-colored, with a collar that you can stand up high. Her boots are a rich brown, high-heeled. Well, that’s just silly. High-heeled boots. Ridiculous. Make up your mind, sexy or safe. Large gold hoop earrings, too, I see, watching Linda push her hair back. Catch something in there and say good-bye to your lobe. I could have blond hair, too, if I wanted. A word to Edward, and voilà. Last week he “tipped” me. Very elegant. Linda’s lipstick color is nice, but her blush is too obvious. Plus the woman is stupid, I can tell just by looking at her. King can do much better than this. I’ll tell him. I owe it to him. As a friend.
There is a sudden silence, and I realize something has been said to me. “Pardon?” I say, smiling an awful, fake smile. My chest hurts.
“I just said it was nice to meet you,” Linda says. “I hope I’ll see you again.”
“Oh! Yes! I hope so, too!”
After King closes the door, I sit back down. “Well! She’s very nice.”
“Yeah.”
“She’s the one you met from the personals, right?”
“Right.”
“So, what does she do?”
“She’s a teacher.”
Nursery school. Of course, she’s exactly the type. I see Linda in her high-heeled boots, hop-hop-hopping around in a circle with her class, all of them being rabbits. Noses twitching. Bent hands for ears.
“She teaches at Boston University.”
Okay, freshman English. “What does she teach?”
“Quantum mechanics.”
“Oh, uh-huh. Well, that’s … So, what book did she bring you?”
King hands me a volume of Shakespeare’s sonnets.
“You like these?” I ask.
“Sure. Don’t you?”
“I never understand them.” I clear my throat. Smile.
I need to go home. In the hamper are about forty loads of wash. And I need to pay the bills. There are many bills. Stacks and stacks of them.
“Shakespeare’s not so hard,” King says. “You can understand this.” He opens to a page. “Here: ‘Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May.’ Nothing hard about that, right?” He sits beside me on the sofa, points to the line, says it again. “See? And they are, aren’t they? Darling? The buds?”
I stare into my lap. His breath is like licorice. Why is his breath like licorice? Mine is like a garlic factory, I’m sure. Not that there is such a thing. A garlic factory. I think about it anyway, imagine blond-haired girls wearing braids and white uniforms standing on an assembly line, shaping cloves into bulbs.
Then I look up at him. His breath is like licorice and his apartment is overly warm because he knows that’s how I like it and his hand is under my chin and he is going to kiss me.
“King.”
He sits back. “I’m sorry.”
“No, it’s … I mean, aren’t you … sort of … involved?”
“With Linda?”
“Yes!”
“I think she’s sort of involved.”
“I’d say so.” I stand, head for the kitchen. “Come on, I’ll help you clean up.”
He follows me. “You don’t have to.”
“No,” I say. “I want to. Really. I like washing dishes.”
I wash and he wipes. For a long while, we don’t talk, just stand, hips nearly touching, quietly working. And then I draw in a breath, take my hands out of the
dishwater and put them on King’s shoulders. And do not understand how he knows how to kiss like that.
I reach around him and untuck his shirt, wonder if I really mean this. I pull away from him, look into his face. “Are you—Is this okay?”
He nods.
“Should we—?”
He nods again, takes my hand and leads me to the bedroom. There, he carefully folds down the blankets, fluffs the pillows. And then he starts to unbutton his shirt, but stops. “I don’t know … I mean, do I—?”
“Yes.”
He doesn’t move.
“I’ll tell you what,” I say. “Let’s just talk. But lying down.”
His relief brightens the room. I lie beside him, stretched out on my side. He is on his back, his eyes closed. Now that we’ve decided to slow down, I’m dying to speed up. I put my head on his shoulder, my hand on his chest. He is more solid than I had imagined. I unbutton two buttons, wait, then rise up to look into his face. “Okay?”
“Yes,” he says. And then we don’t talk anymore. And when I get home, I look at myself in the mirror to see if what I feel shows. What I see is the faint transfer of King’s mustache, and I wash it off with regret.
At eight o’clock, Travis and I are watching TV when Edward comes home. He nods hello, hangs up his coat, then comes to sit on the sofa beside us. At the commercial, Travis goes into the kitchen, and Edward leans toward me. “What happened to you?” he whispers. And then, when I don’t answer, he leans back, arms crossed, smiling. “That’s what I thought.”
“What?” I say. “You don’t know anything.”
“Oh, please.”
I stare at him. “Your teeth are going to get all dried out if you don’t stop smiling. And then your lips will stick to them, and you’ll look like a chimpanzee. Stop smiling!”
“You’re not.”
. . .
At midnight, still awake, I call Rita.
“We did it!” I say.
Rita gasps. “Tell me everything. Everything. Wait! First I want to go get a glass of wine.”
“Okay, I will, too.”
I go quietly down to the kitchen, pour myself a glass of wine, and head back to my bedroom, closing both Travis’s and my door.
I get under the covers, pick up the phone. “Are you there?”
“Yes! Tell me everything!”
“Okay.” I lie back against the pillows, take a sip of wine, wonder where to start. I see King’s face over me again, a tenderness there that made me separate into two selves, one who lay in a warm bed held by warm arms and another who looked down and nodded. He had run his hands over my breasts so gently, so tentatively. And then his mouth was on me and moving down, so slowly. And when finally he put himself inside me, he froze for a moment, his breath held, his eyes fixed on mine, and then there was no separation of anything. For the first time in my life, I had the sensation of simultaneous giving and taking so huge there was no room for anything else, anywhere. It was less sexual than sacred, close to what I think a good death might be. He had wept a little afterward, saying that he was afraid to believe it could ever happen like this, that he was so grateful that I was the one, that he was sorry he was weeping, he didn’t know why he was weeping, he felt terrific, he felt like running outside and lifting up cars. And I held his giant shaggy head on my chest and stroked his hair and said that was fine, I would be happy to help him, so long as the cars were small. And then we had done everything again. And then he had said he was sorry he still weighed so much, he would lose more, he hadn’t hurt me, had he? And I said no, he had not.
“Rita?” I say.
“Yeah?”
“I think I don’t want to tell you. I mean, it was wonderful. I just don’t want to tell you the details. I feel like … it’s ours.”
Silence. And then Rita says, “Sam?”
“Yeah?”
“Do you have your glass of wine?”
“Yeah.”
“Well, hold it up, girl, and let’s have a toast.”
35
“Why are you making things so fancy?” Travis asks. “Who’s coming?”
“Mom and Lydia.”
“That’s all?”
“Yes.”
“Why don’t you just do things regular, then?”
“Because they’re fancy.”
A horn honks outside. Travis doesn’t move.
“There’s Dad,” I say.
“I know.”
“Well … Are you ready?”
“Yeah. Are you having that cake you made for dinner?”
“Yes.”
“Is it King’s recipe?”
“Yes. I’ll save you some. Okay?”
The horn honks again. “Go, honey. Don’t keep him waiting.”
He lifts his duffel bag, shoulders it. “It’s more fun here.”
How should I feel about this? I’m glad. I’m sad. But I’m glad. And I know that sometimes the cake will be sitting on David’s counter, too.
I go to the door with Travis, kiss him good-bye, wave to David, hurry back to the kitchen.
I have just put in the bread to warm when the doorbell rings, and then I hear my mother yoo-hooing her way down the hall. I kiss her, then Lydia, then lead them to the lavishly decorated dining-room table, where they exclaim softly over everything. Travis is right. It is fun here.
We are sitting back in our chairs, satisfied, empty dessert plates before us. Lydia is talking about her oldest grandchild, who lives in Seattle and who visited her yesterday. “He’s almost forty, and do you know he still goes to see if I keep his little black plastic horse in my night stand? He left it at my house when he was just a little guy, maybe two or so, and I put it in my drawer to keep for him until the next time I saw him. But he liked that it was by my bed, and he told me to keep it there for him. Every time I’ve seen him since, he’s asked to see it. ‘Checking on the livestock,’ he calls it.”
This makes sense to me. I once spent hours in Veronica’s basement, looking through scrapbooks. I found drawings that Louise and I had done over the years, and I actually counted, making sure Louise didn’t have more in there than I did. We were exactly even. I suppose you always want someone to prize things about you.
I have a footlocker for Travis’s drawings, his schoolwork, art projects. Although he is hardly sentimental about it. He looked through it one day, then asked, “What do you keep all this junk for?”
“You might want it someday,” I told him.
“What for? It’s embarrassing!”
“It won’t be when you’re forty.”
“Yeah, right. Like I’ll be able to even see when I’m forty!”
I stared at him, open-mouthed, and he left the room.
“How’s married life, Lydia?” Veronica asks.
“Oh, we’re very happy. Thomas is a wonderful man. I feel lucky to have found him, and I’m so glad to have taken the chance all over again. Not a single regret.”
My mother smiles, looks down at her plate.
“You were very happy in your marriage, too, weren’t you?” Lydia asks my mother.
“We were. Sad to say, I think that’s a rare thing. I think most young people today are so focused on tomorrow they forget all about today. And I think they’re as afraid of happiness as they are of pain! Scared to say they care. Scared to take a chance. Scared to say they’re just as sentimental and full of human need as people always have been and always will be.”
“It’s true,” Lydia says, stirring her tea.
They are leaning toward each other, nodding, in complete agreement. I suppose I’m one of the “young people” they’re referring to. One of those scaredy-cats. But I did admit to my own needs, to my own sentimentality. And look where it got me.
“You know,” Veronica says, “I was over visiting a girlfriend the other day and her father was staying with her, this old geezer who used to be a farmer. Really nice old man. Blind now, but not a bit sorry for himself. He sat down with us and was telling us about
life on the farm. Said he still dreamed about it, that in his dreams he could still see. Said he could ask for what he wanted to dream about, too, and oftentimes, it would happen.”
“Really!” Lydia says. “I’d love to be able to do that!”
“Well, me, too. You can imagine! I’d be with my husband every night! Anyway, this guy said that he’d asked his dreams to let him see his wife again, and sure enough, it happened. He saw a time after they were first married. They were out on the front porch, thinking of all they were going to do, just sitting on the wooden steps, holding hands, the sun going down, talking about how they’d have babies till the plumbing quit. He said the lilacs were out, and the smell was so sweet it could bring a dead man back to life. His wife let her hair out of its bun, shook it all loose. And she looked over and smiled at him, and he said, ‘Lord, she was so pretty and she was my wife.’ Well, my friend and I just couldn’t say a word, all choked up. Just seeing him, all those years ago, thinking life was longer than it is. But you know, he said that at least he knew right then that it was a good moment. Said mostly you don’t know, in this life, you don’t know when it’s happening. You look back later and say, Oh! Well now, that was a good time! But he said he knew it then. Said he knew it lots of times. He said, ‘Yes, sir. I’ve been blessed.’ ”
“Well, that’s just how I feel,” Lydia says.
My mother looks at me and I nod. I know that despite everything she lost, she feels the same way. And wants me to, as well.
I see us, suddenly, as though from above, three women sitting around a dining-room table, our mother’s hands folded in our laps, our lipstick faded from our mouths. All around us clocks ticking, stars shining. They used to be my age, and I will soon be theirs. They have never forgotten the reason to love.
I don’t know what I’m waiting for.
I look at my watch, start to speak. “Go,” my mother says.
36
No one answers when I knock at his door. I try it, find it open, and put my head in. “King?” And then, louder, “King?”