A dozen harmless vanities keep her balanced. A man once said to her – and she remembers exactly who he was and all the details of their meeting – that she had lovely earlobes. A manicurist, years ago, had commented passingly on the length of her nailbeds. (She hadn’t even known the word “nailbed” but was grateful nevertheless for this minor tribute.) Her sister, Bibbi, confided once, “You have the kind of face that doesn’t have to smile all the time. You can just go around with your face as it is, not having to try too hard.” All of these casually offered comments have been stored carefully at the back of her brain.
Earlier in the day Dr. van Ginkel, with her beautiful solid Dutch mouth, had delivered a nervous creed. “Our bodies are inescapable,” she said to Fay. “They are the only bodies we can ever know.”
And Fay, who cannot now recall what Tom Avery looks like, had nodded in agreement.
∼ CHAPTER 18 ∼
What I’d Really Like
IN THE LAST FEW DAYS, SINCE HIS MEETING WITH FAY MCLEOD, Tom’s been living the mechanical glassy life of a sleepwalker. A segment of his conscious existence has been dislodged and assigned to automatic pilot.
So this is how a robot functions, he thinks, coming and going as through various humid dreams and wakenings, eating hamburgers and donuts, driving to the station shortly before midnight and home again after his four-hour shift, gunning the car down the dark narrow streets, breaking through the nightly quiet with spurts of gas, a foot on the pedal pushing the gray-colored air ahead of him. That’s all he does: eats and sleeps and attends to the continuous, unfolding surface of his day and night routines, always surprised that his arrangements can be managed this mindlessly.
But inside his head he’s cooking up a stew of audacious fantasies, midnight strategies of stealth, flash, and perversity which he recognizes, but only in his calmer moments, as being insane.
A fertile, lucid happiness has taken charge of him, made him exaggerated and crazy about what he should do next, what is required of him. This feeling, though unfocused, cannot be put down, cannot be cleared out of his mind.
His first thought was to get on a plane and go to Europe, where he would intercept Fay McLeod. He’s never been to Europe; nothing there has ever seemed compelling enough to compensate for what he imagines to be an assault of massive stone monuments and continuous drenching rain. He fears, more than damp feet, the narrow Continental streets full of toxic haze, and unreadable European maps whose rivers, roads, railway lines, and national boundaries wrinkle and shrink the eyesight of travelers and strip them clean of volition, of identity. Europe with its sneering face. Europe the mercenary uncle.
But now? He could surprise her, arriving suddenly and presenting himself, his bones, his wayward, undisguised self. Tonight she’ll be arriving in Paris after a week in Amsterdam and Copenhagen, and he’s succeeded, with only minimum difficulty, in tracking down where she’s staying: the hôtel de l’Avenir, on the rue du Cherche-Midi. (L’avenir? He remembers from his high-school French what the word means: it means future; he embraces this pellet of knowledge, this omen.)
First he had phoned the switchboard at the National Center for Folklore Studies, where Fay worked, and asked, with cautious, underheated guile, for her forwarding address. (“I’m trying to reach …”) He put his question quickly, drawing in his breath and managing to suggest that a small but urgent crisis required that he get in touch with Ms. McLeod immediately. Ms. McLeod; he’d stretched out that murmury syllable Ms., layering it with solicitude.
He was firmly refused. “I’m afraid we cannot give out that kind of information,” the shocked, reproving switchboard operator told him, in a voice that was, at the same time, oddly drenched with sweetness.
Fay existed, at least. That much was confirmed, and he longed suddenly for the outside world to keep on confirming it.
Next he phoned Sonya. “Would you happen to know,” he began, suspecting he sounded solemn and bogus, “where Fay is staying in Paris?” “Hang on a sec,” she’d said, cheerful, offhand, phlegmatic, as though there were nothing untoward or desperate about this request of his. “Lemme ask Clyde, he’s got Fay’s itinerary around here somewhere. Oh, here it is, right on the bulletin board. Hôtel de l’Avenir, rue du Cherche-Midi, number fourteen.”
If he really intended to go to Europe he’d have to approach Big Bruce, and quick, about getting time off. He’d have to pitch his plea a grain huskier than usual. “Look, Bruce, I’ve got to get away. I’m close to exhaustion, that’s the truth of it. These late nights, it’s crazy, and I’ve been going at it hard for three years straight. The ratings are right up there at the moment. Plus, summer’s slow anyway, with everyone at the lake. Plus, Dexter’d kill for a chance to take over for a couple of weeks. Right now – this is just between you and me – right now I feel like I’ll maybe crack up if I don’t get away, and I mean really away. I was thinking of, well, maybe going to Europe….”
No, no, no, no. What kind of presumptuous nut case was he. Think it through, buddy.
He decided he would phone her instead. He’d sit down and figure out the time difference, catch her early in the morning before she left the hotel. Hello. (Reminding himself not to yell.) It’s Tom Avery. From Winnipeg? We met last week? At your brother’s. I walked you home, remember? Well, I just wanted to …
To touch base? To connect? To hear your voice? To remind you of mine? To see how you’re making out over there? So, how’s the weather? (Keeping his voice up, keeping his throat full of jolly sparkles.) When you get back, I was thinking we could maybe … Yeah, right!
She’d flip. She’d run. At the very least she’d be confused, alarmed. Is anything the matter? she’d probably ask. Or, after a smarting, doubting silence, deliver her own cold inquiry: Why exactly are you phoning? What is it you want?
No. A phone call was madness. And to think he’d got as far as looking up the international dialing code.
He’d read somewhere, a novel, maybe, about a man who’d sent a woman a bunch of flowers every hour for twenty-four hours. The flamboyance of this gesture had impressed him at the time, also the foolishness of it. It was a folly, one he could suddenly understand but knew himself incapable of. And the expense of an act like that might, well, convince her of his utter fecklessness.
Or else remind her of a novel she’d once read in which a man had sent… Oh God!
He’d write her a letter instead.
If he mails it to the hôtel de l’Avenir today she’ll have it in ten days, or so he was told at the post office when he went to buy an air letter. (An air letter seemed jauntier than plain paper and an envelope, and more innocently motivated.) Ten days. The thought of the time gap is crushing, but he sees its usefulness. Ten days to cool and objectify the words on the page.
But what will he say?
He has the thudding sensation of new spaces entered and instantly lost, but he latches on to one nuggety word: now. He cradles that word close to his body.
Now. This minute. Before it disappears. Now or never.
He spreads the blue tissuey aerogram on his kitchen table, which he has first washed and carefully dried. The paper lies flat like a lake, empty and blue, its glued edges slightly curled, offering up to him a spacious, clean, formal permission. For this sheet of paper he feels an excruciating tenderness.
“Friday morning,” he writes in the upper-right-hand corner, then shuts his eyes and allows an image of Fay’s intricate mouth and eyes to form and dissolve, her oval face, her chin, her neck, her long supple arms swinging, a dozen balloons floating above her.
The white plastic pen he holds in his hand has the words “Imperial Bank of Commerce” on it. Its ink is vivid blue. This ink will be the vector of his pleading, he will trust it absolutely.
“Dear Fay,” he writes carefully.
“CAN I DRIVE you home?” he’d said to her that night. Or maybe – he can’t remember the exact words – “Would you like a lift?”
She had turned toward him, pausin
g. “It’s only a twenty-minute walk,” she’d said, or something to that effect, smiling all the while with that large mobile mouth of hers, the lipstick eaten away. “I don’t want to take you out of your way.”
“No trouble at all.” Where had that wheeze come from? Shameful, like an old man. He cleared his throat ostentatiously, observing her lower lip and imagining how it would feel to draw his tongue along its length, a pencil feeling out a line. “I’m not in any special hurry.”
“Well…” Biting down on her lower lip, considering. A light at the back of her eyes sizing him up.
“I’d be glad to give you a lift.”
“If you’re sure.”
“Clyde could easily run you home, Fay,” Sonya offered.
“Sure,” from Clyde, who was yawning, who had slipped off his shoes.
“No, really,” Tom said too loudly, setting down his coffee cup, giddy. “I’ll be happy to. I’ve got Gary with me, but there’s plenty of room in the car.”
“Well…” She was still doubtful, or was this a brand of politeness he hadn’t encountered before? Or did it hold a measure of suspicion? Or judgment? “I live just over on Grosvenor Avenue.”
“Grosvenor? So do I.”
“Where on Grosvenor?” Her eyes opened wide, her mouth moved up. Brown eyes. Eyebrows faint. That mouth. He searched her features for some fault that might reassure him.
“Between Stafford and Wellington. Closer to Stafford.”
“You do? So do I. What number?”
“Near the corner, eight-forty-eight.”
“That’s amazing. I’m at eight-forty-seven. The condo conversion. I’ve been there two years.”
“With the wood door? The flowers? I’m right across the street.”
“The red brick?”
“Third floor.”
“We’re neighbors.”
Had he said that, or had she?
“Neighbors,” Sonya repeated. She was standing by the sink, briskly wrapping up a wedge of birthday cake for Gary. She said it again, preoccupied, neutral. “Neighbors.”
TOM STOOD BY THE CURB. Next to him was Fay McLeod, and holding on to Fay’s hand was seven-year-old Gary Waring, solidly gripping in his other hand a plastic bag of birthday cake and candy. Overhead a double row of elms met, their full crowns nodding with rainwater. The air was cool, damp, the pressed wet unfocused air of early evening. Eight o’clock. In the western sky a column of peach-colored cloud spiraled upward. Yale Avenue at this hour was tranquil. And empty.
“Hey.” Gary was yelling in high, childish pips of relish. “Hey, Tom, I don’t see any car.”
WHEN JENNY WARING had phoned to ask if he would look after Gary for a couple of days, Tom had been taken by surprise. Jenny had never before asked him to do anything of the kind, and it had never occurred to him to offer, though he could see, when he considered, how it might do her good to get away for a change. On the telephone she had been breathless, excited, but he heard apology in her voice, too, and when he at once agreed to look after Gary she had seemed almost cravenly grateful.
He had had to assure her that he was overjoyed at the idea of taking care of a small boy, that the two of them, child and man, would abandon themselves to a disordered male reign of junk food and bacchic license.
In fact, Tom was nervous about how exactly the two of them would get along. Ages seven and forty thrust together. The substance of a sentimental film, maybe, but the reality made him itch; it was not what he would have chosen. He liked Gary, who was a sturdy child, dark haired, watchful, his mouth perpetually hanging open a thoughtful quarter inch, but how do you keep a kid amused for two days? What would they talk about? He imagined long silences, uneasiness, false enthusiasm.
Children baffle Tom. He hardly knows any. Children are unpredictable, the way they behave and the way they turn out. It strikes him that a good many of his friends are frightened of their own children, that the little ruins and ironies of married life were furiously multiplied by their presence. Noise, mess, complication, dangers to watch out for. Children go crazy at times, seized by bizarre, primitive notions. Tom knows all this; he even remembers at times something of what it was like being a child, the precise sensations. The hands of children are sticky. They wet their pants, stick out their tongues. That people love them seems amazing to him, heartening, too, even miraculous.
And they do. Once people have produced a baby, their world softens up and becomes a baby world of pink toweling, tiny teeth, diapers, highchairs, scrubbable plastic toys that nevertheless acquire the fetid sweetness of the babies themselves. The funny or outrageous misdeeds of their progeny were recounted again and again, with wily dejection, as though to confirm membership in the rueful, sober, laconic confederacy of parenthood.
Nevertheless, it was where Tom’s friends wanted to be, the only place – this is what he’s concluded. Even Nathan and Judy Kappel’s little Melody, who hits her head against the wall and who once bit Tom’s wrist, even Kelly Waterford, who throws himself down in supermarket aisles screaming, even Trevor Masterson, with crossed eyes and curious webs of flesh between his thumb and forefinger, even these damaged, difficult offspring consume their parents’ love.
Tom, invited to houses where children are present, does his best; he does what he thinks is expected of him, pats bellies and diapered bottoms, brings gifts, comments on the agreeable shapes of baby heads – always a safe topic – or the presence of baby hair, baby resemblances, baby cleverness, the promise of widely spaced eyes or a muscular grip. He knows what to do, more or less, and he likes to think he does it with sincerity, but he knows better. Children are not much fun. They’re not – for some reason this is a well-guarded secret – they’re not particularly interesting. And so Tom knows there’s something here he doesn’t understand. Some joyful, consuming secret.
And he’d been touched when the Warings some years ago asked him to be Gary’s godfather. At that time he had been between marriages; it may have been that they felt sorry for him – oddly, this occurs to him today for the first time. Gary was a lump of baby tissue packed into a blanket. He smelled of urea and baby powder (that dense blocked odor) and soap and milky vomit. His bundled arms and lolling head appeared boneless and only tentatively connected to his swollen trunk. His features were small, snaillike, closed, and when he was placed, compacted and warm and surprisingly robust, in Tom’s arms during the christening ceremony in the Warings’ living room, he opened his eyes briefly, rolled his eyeballs upward as if catching the tail end of a milky dream, then fell once again into baby unconsciousness.
That’s when you really love your kids, people tell Tom, when you come across them sleeping with their limbs outflung on the bed sheet, or else curled up tight like a squirrel or some other burrowing creature. The sleeping faces of children are their real faces. They’re weighted with heat, painted pink by the glow of a night-light. Their skin is perfect, translucent, newly made, the visible sign of incalculable trust – the face it would gladden us to go back to and claim.
“I DON’T SEE any car.”
The words came toward Tom slowly, as though from a great distance. The cloudy pillar billowing up over the trees, the concrete curb where he and Fay McLeod balanced, the pale side-parting of her dark hair – all this had pitched him into dizzy confusion.
Why exactly was Gary yelling his head off? The car, where was it? It must be around the corner. Stolen? Had he left the key in the ignition? He knew there was something he wasn’t remembering, but what?
He reached into his jacket pocket, touched the leather tag of his key ring, and remembered.
“Is something wrong?” Fay asked in a low voice.
“Where is it?” Gary was pounding on Tom’s leg. “Where is it?”
“It’s not here.” He was groaning. “It’s all right, but it’s not here. I forgot. I don’t know how I could forget. I walked over here. I don’t have it, my car – it’s at home. In the parking lot. Parked there.”
The confession c
ame running out of his mouth in the usual way of confessions, unsorted, discontinuous, but at the same time the flip side of his brain was coolly reading the screen of Fay’s expression. It was lovely to see. He thought it a perfect moment. What she registered were images of bewilderment, attention, comprehension, relief, surprise, laughter, and then – and this he found loveliest of all – a brisk realignment. “Well, then,” she said, looking first at Gary and then at him, “why don’t we start walking?”
THEY WALKED SLOWLY. Here and there were puddles of greenish rainwater, and in the puddles floated small twigs and leaves. Overhead the branches of the separate trees gathered together, oak, elm, ash, poplar – city trees with black tarry rings painted around their trunks, put there to discourage the cankerworm larvae. The uniformity of these dark markings turned them into a tree army, marching straight up to a point of perspective.
River Heights was an old part of town. It occurred to Tom for the first time that someone had sat down and planned these streets, inked them on a master plan and given them names – Harvard, Yale, Kingsway, Oxford – suggestive of older, more settled, more easterly territory. Sixty or seventy years earlier, someone, thinking of families and the needs of small children had picked up a ruler and marked off lot sizes, making them generous, allowing for garages and back lanes and for space where raspberries might be grown and front yards that were broad enough to give the houses a touch of dignity, of unassuming definition.
It seemed to Tom, recalling this walk later, that he and Fay had strolled past these houses at a kind of princely pace. Their strides were those of the long-limbed, the unhurried. He must have shortened his steps to match hers, or else she had stretched hers to meet his. It would have been a minuscule adjustment. She was perhaps two inches shorter than he was, which would make her about five feet, nine inches. A tall girl. No, not a girl, certainly not a girl. How old? Thirty, he guessed. And married? If he got a chance he’d check her left hand for a ring, not that that meant anything these days. He would pay attention, listen for the plural pronoun, the attached woman’s “we” or “us” or “ours.”