Professor Eglantine signed her check and wrapped her lime-green boa around the collar of her black jacket like a scarf. She picked up her large hardcover book, tiptoed toward the door on her five-inch heels, somehow seeming both exquisitely composed and as if the book’s torturous weight might pitch her over and pin her to the floor. Pella sent a pleading look in her direction, hoping against hope that she would tiptoe over to engage them in charming, heartfelt conversation that would demonstrate once and for all that Westish was a place where an elegant, useful life could be led, but it didn’t happen, and Professor Eglantine was gone. So much for romance, Pella thought, so much for a new mother-in-law. Where the heck was her father?
“Don’t know what to tell you,” she said. “I like doing dishes.”
David ruffled his tightly trimmed beard with his fingertips, sighed an ennui-riddled sigh meant to indicate that he didn’t much care what Pella did but wished she wouldn’t be so exasperating. “You know, if you wanted to leave, Bella, you could have done so in a slightly more civil fashion.”
“I thought it was fairly civil,” Pella said. “No flashing blades. No bloodshed.”
“Maybe mature is the word I’m looking for, then. You’re not a teenager anymore, Bella. You can’t keep running away from home every time you feel frightened about the future. Whatever the trouble, I wish you had talked to me about it. I’m sure we could have worked it out like adults. I’m sure we still could.”
Pella slugged back the rest of her wine. She was shifting into the blame-David phase of the evening. “Right,” she said. “I can imagine how that conversation would have gone. ‘Uh, David, I’m leaving you because you’re controlling and unreasonable and debilitatingly jealous. You don’t want me to work, don’t want me in school, don’t even want me to learn how to drive. So, uh, whaddya think, sweetie?’ ”
David drummed his fingers against the base of his wineglass and looked at her with oh-so-reasonable bemusement. “Bella, don’t twist my words. I didn’t want you to take driver’s ed while you were on certain medications. That’s all.”
“What medications? Ambusal? Kelvesin? What year do you think this is? Every person on the road is on something or other.”
“Those people already know how to drive. You were in a fragile state at the time. And San Francisco is a difficult place for a novice. Heavy traffic, constant changes in elevation. I thought it would be dangerous.”
“We could have gone somewhere quieter. You could have made some accommodations. But instead you used it as another excuse to isolate me. Who knows what kind of trouble I’d have gotten into if I’d had a car.”
David thrived on these arguments, his manner growing calmer and saner by the second as Pella tipped toward madness. Except of course that he was the mad one. “Bella, I’m surprised at you. When we first got married, I wanted you to start college right away, remember? And you told me that love and your art were all that mattered to you. So we decided you shouldn’t work.”
He was mocking her, throwing around these big little words—love, work, art. “That was at the beginning,” she said.
“And a fine beginning it was. Remember when I met Marietta and invited her to dinner? And we took your best piece, the big collage with the salmon colors, and hung it facing her chair? I felt like a criminal mastermind when she took the bait. That was quite a night.”
Marietta Cheng owned a gallery; she’d bought Sea-Spray for four thousand dollars, Pella’s first and only real sale. Pella had almost backed out of the deal, for reasons she couldn’t quite express, but David convinced her that though they didn’t need the money, it was important for her to establish herself as a commercially viable artist. Soon thereafter Pella’s ill feelings began. She blew Marietta’s money on vintage dresses and other long-gone trivia—she’d have been better off keeping the one thing she’d made that she actually liked.
“In the beginning you would have let me work,” she said. “But later…”
“Later you were sick, Bella. I wanted you to get well. That’s all.” He took her hands. “Look. If you want a divorce, you can have a divorce. I’m not going to dissuade you. But this”—with a flick of his eyes he took in not just the escargot and the aging patrons but the school and the town and the whole Midwest—“is not for you, Bella. You can live in the loft. I’ll rent an apartment. You can get a job at a restaurant, apply to culinary school, go about this the proper way. Who knows? Maybe someday you’ll let me design a restaurant for you.”
Shit, thought Pella. David wasn’t going to win her back—and oh what a prize she was—but he was going to destroy whatever tenuous momentum she’d been building. If she was going to enroll at Westish, she needed to believe that she should enroll at Westish, that living near her father, working for Chef Spirodocus, studying with Professor Eglantine, was the way to start to build a life. If she entertained doubts about whether she belonged here, she’d wind up back in bed, paralyzed by those doubts. The circumstances were tipped in Westish’s favor—she could enroll without finishing high school, her tuition would be free, she was already here and so far felt okay. But how could she not have doubts, what with the sad-looking entrées arriving, the slumped-over patrons departing, her father AWOL as usual, Mike off petting Henry somewhere? If tonight was a referendum on her presence at Westish, the results weren’t good. She didn’t love David anymore, but love had trained her to see the world through his eyes, and through his eyes this place was a vapid dump.
The wine was white, which meant they’d switched.
She depended on men too much, Mike this Daddy that, needing one to rescue her from the next; even Chef Spirodocus was a man, of a sort. Maybe she needed more women in her life, that was why her mind latched on to Judy Eglantine, but she’d always gotten along better with men and that was unlikely to change much here, where most of the women were younger than she and would no doubt shun her and be scared of her and call her a slut no matter what she did. Was that too pessimistic? In any case, she’d have to rely on herself.
Something buzzed. David pulled his BlackBerry out of his pocket, glanced at the screen. “It’s your father,” he said.
“So don’t ans—,” she said, but David already had. He handed her the phone.
“Pella. I’m so sorry. I can be there in fiftee—”
“Don’t worry about it,” she said chipperly. “I think you were right not to come. David and I needed to hash some things out by ourselves.”
“Really?” said her dad, not believing her.
“Really.”
“You’re not mad at me?”
“Next question!” Chipper but honest. Chipper, honest, and drunk.
“Okay… it’s not going too well, I hope?”
“That’s proprietary.” Pella could hear noise in the background—voices, a kind of clinking, faint music. “Are you in a restaurant?”
“Me?… No, no, of course not. I got waylaid by Bruce Gibbs… A president’s work and so on… Are you sure there’s nothing I can do?”
“I’ll see you tomorrow,” Pella said.
It could barely have been nine thirty, but around the room checks were being paid, jackets donned. Midwestern living: the ten o’clock news and up at dawn. Pella grabbed the neck of the wine bottle, no longer willing to wait for the waiter’s invisible hand. She looked at David. “I’m sleeping with someone.”
“I don’t believe you.”
She knew he meant it: he didn’t believe her. “It’s true.”
“I don’t believe you,” he repeated. “I don’t even know why you’d say that. What about us?”
“What about us? It’s not like we’re sleeping together. We haven’t had sex in a year.”
He glared at her. “That’s not true.”
“Of course it’s true,” Pella said. “A year at least.”
“Bella. You don’t remember the last time we made love?”
Pella tried to remember. But why should she remember? They’d made love less frequently, and th
en they’d stopped. It wasn’t like there’d been some kind of ceremony, or even a conscious decision.
“It was Christmas Day,” David said. “The day I gave you these.” He reached into his inside jacket pocket and pulled out a tiny manila envelope. He undid the flap and shook out onto the tablecloth two gorgeous teardrop earrings, sapphire and platinum. Pella had never seen them before. Or had she?
“You’re crazy,” she said.
“I thought you might want to keep them. I don’t have much use for them myself.”
Pella resisted the urge to pick one up. “We did not have sex on Christmas,” she said.
David fixed her with a calm, pitying expression, the kind that usually preceded some calmly phrased suggestion—that she should calm down, or drink some water, or consider seeing someone. “Bella,” he said reprovingly. “You know I hate it when you do this.”
“Do what?”
“Pretend that you don’t remember things. As if memories were just a matter of convenience, and you could throw them away if you didn’t want them. Although why you wouldn’t want such pleasant memories is beyond me. We woke up. It was sunny. I cooked breakfast. We listened to Krebenspell’s Second. We made love. We went to dinner at Trisquette. I gave you these.” His voice was obnoxiously calm. Pella’s need for a sky-blue pill was through the roof, but she wasn’t sure where her purse had gone. She looked for the bottle of wine, but it was gone too, hauled off by the waiter with the hairless hands. She’d probably drunk the whole thing herself. David always stopped at two glasses. She’d have to be crazy not to remember those earrings, and she was clearly not crazy. Opaquely not crazy. Not not not crazy. She vaguely remembered dinner in late December, an awful afternoon walled in by the platinum sun, the bizarre creakings of Deskin Krebenspell, whom David regarded as the quote “only living composer.” No making love—no way. But people believed what they wanted to believe. She’d told David that she was sleeping with Mike, and he refused to believe it, had forgotten it instantly, because his brain couldn’t stand to know such a thing. If he wanted to believe they’d slept together on Christmas, let him believe it.
But the earrings were something else. The earrings existed. They lay there on the table. They did look vaguely familiar—no doubt they’d seen them in some boutique in Hayes Valley, and Pella had oohed and ahhed, and David, having taken note of her oohing and ahhing—he’d never been stingy with gifts—bought them before flying out here. And now was pretending that he’d given them to her before. She picked one up to put it back in its manila envelope. A nice touch, that: to hand them over in their brand-new box would make them seem brand-new. It was a classic David maneuver to try to win her back this way, by making her think she was crazy. He made her crazy, no one else. He did have good taste, though. The earring squirted from her hand and landed in her empty wineglass amid the pale grit. She should drink it, swallow it—now that would make her crazy. And it would make him crazy too.
She lifted the wineglass, clicked it against David’s, which was still half full. She met his eyes meanly, lifted the glass to her lips. Fuck Mike Schwartz was the toast that arose in her mind. Fuck Mike Schwartz, whom I live to fuck. Never too drunk to use whom. Funny that she’d thought live to fuck instead of love to fuck or like to fuck. Like to fuck would have been the most accurate, but it didn’t make much difference. David was speaking and reaching. She leaned away. She had the wineglass nearly inverted, but the earring hung up in the little hollow that led down to the stem. She tapped the glass with her injured hand. The earring rattled free and skied down the goblet’s concavity into her mouth. She rolled it around, cold metal and stone. She tested it with her teeth, slipped it under her tongue. It felt right.
“Spit that out,” David said, alarmed.
She stuck her tongue out at him.
“You could be seriously injured.”
A thousand-dollar dinner. A piece of performance art.
“You’re acting like a five-year-old,” David said. “It’s not becoming.”
“You said you had no use for them.”
“Quit performing. Spit it out.”
She showed him the inside of her mouth, like a five-year-old who’s finished her spinach: clean. When she’d gone to swallow she felt a thrill and then a fear—what if it stuck in her throat? But it was small and went down without a problem.
David looked terrified. He pulled out his phone.
“What are you doing?”
“I’m calling an ambulance. That thing will shred your intestines.”
“Oh, relax.” Pella shoved back her chair, a bit unsteadily, and walked away from the table. Relying on yourself wasn’t easy; it could involve strong measures. There were two stalls in the women’s bathroom, both vacant. She’d never really been bulimic, but it was one of those things a girl just knew how to do. The earring came up in a tide of pink wine and snail sauce. She held her hair with her left hand and fished the beautiful blue teardrop out of the toilet with her right. She went to the sink to rinse her mouth and then the earring. A wicker basket of woodchip potpourri sat beside the basin. In the mirror she looked blanched and haggard, thirty at least, but the wine was gone from her stomach and she was starting to feel better already. She wouldn’t even have a hangover tomorrow.
43
Schwartz, still wet from his post-practice shower, was standing in his weirdly clean kitchen, chasing a couple Vicodin with some flat ginger ale, when he heard the gate’s jingle and footsteps on the front porch. The bell rang. Pella, he thought wishfully, but she was off somewhere with The Architect. Schwartz had fantasized about hunting them down, about putting a scare into The Architect if not pummeling him into submission, but Pella didn’t have a cell phone, he didn’t know where to find her, and he needed to get some sleep before tomorrow’s games.
“Gentlemen.” He nodded, shaking Starblind’s hand and then Rick’s. “Can I get you something to drink?”
“No thanks,” said Starblind. Rick shook his head solemnly, his pink anvil chin describing a long slow arc.
“Something wrong?” Schwartz asked. “O’Shea looks ready for a funeral.”
Rick stared down at his Birkenstocks. Starblind gave the lid of the mailbox a few apprehensive flips, not meeting Schwartz’s eye. “There’s something we wanted to talk to you about.”
“Well, here I am.”
“Right.” Starblind sucked in a breath and steeled himself. “We talked it over at practice today, and we think that Henry should sit out tomorrow.”
Schwartz’s whole big body tensed. “Who’s we?”
“Rick and myself. Boddington and Phlox. Jensen. Ajay. Meat.” Starblind glanced at Rick. “Who else?”
Rick looked like Starblind had just asked him to name a Jew. “Sooty Kim,” he muttered.
“Right. Sooty was there.”
“You had a meeting,” Schwartz said.
Starblind shrugged. “Not officially. It was just the juniors and seniors. No need to get the younger guys involved.”
“Was the Buddha there?”
“Buddha hasn’t been around much lately.”
“What about me? Was I there?”
“No,” Starblind conceded. “You weren’t.”
“Sounds like some meeting.” A dangerous calm suffused Schwartz’s voice. “What else did you geniuses do? Elect yourselves captains?”
“Schwartzy, please. Hear us out.” Rick’s normally ruddled face was drained of color. His left thumb flicked at an imaginary lighter, tapped at the filter end of an imaginary cigarette. “It wasn’t a meeting. How could we have a team meeting about this? What would we do, get everyone together to talk about what’s wrong with the Skrimmer? With him sitting right there?”
“So you did it on the sly,” Schwartz said. “Behind my back.”
“It wasn’t like that. It was an impromptu discussion that led to a consensus. And here we are right afterward to tell you about it. As our captain.”
“How big of you.”
??
?I’ll tell you what’s big,” Starblind said. “This weekend. These four games. We beat Coshwale, we win UMSCACs. We go to the regional tournament.”
“You think we’re gonna beat Coshwale without Henry?” Schwartz said. “Even if we could, you want to go into regionals with him riding the bench? You’re nuts.”
“He cost us that game yesterday,” Starblind said.
“The whole team played like shit the whole game! Rick here dropped a pop-up, Boddington booted two grounders, I struck out with a runner on third. That play of Henry’s was one play. We should have been up by twelve by then.”
“We should’ve been,” said Starblind, “but we weren’t.”
Rick sighed miserably, riffling his ginger hair. “Schwartzy, you know how I feel about the little guy. I love him and I’d go to war for him. He’s like the brother I never had, and I have four brothers. But what’s going on with him is messing with all of our heads. Why do you think we looked so shaky yesterday? I’m not saying it’s Henry’s fault, but…”
Rick lifted his arms and let them drop. Schwartz stayed silent, waiting for him to finish. “Nobody knows how to talk to him anymore. It changes the whole atmosphere. When we win nobody wants to celebrate, because Henry’s our leader, you and him are our leaders, and obviously he’s hurting. And when we lose… well, we shouldn’t lose. We shouldn’t have lost to Wainwright. We’re too good a team.”
“Izzy looks sharp at practice,” Starblind added. “He could step right in. We’d barely miss a beat.”
A pickup rolled by with two kegs in the bed, blasting the rap anthem of the moment. Friday night, for nonathletes, was under way. Schwartz felt a splinter from a cracked porch board pierce the meat of his foot. “Tomorrow’s the Skrimmer’s day,” he said. “His family’ll be here. Aparicio’ll be here. You think he’s just going to take a seat?”