“Betta!”
I moved in closer. “I brought something for you.” All the way over, I’d been thinking about a time I went to John’s office at the end of his day. I’d sat in the waiting room wearing nothing but a trench coat. When the last patient had exited, her eyes reddened, a bouquet of Kleenex in her hand, I’d knocked on the door. “One moment, please,” John had said, and then, when he’d opened the door and saw me standing there, he’d said, “Betta!” And I’d said, “Surprise!” And I’d come in and waited on his sofa, getting more and more aroused, while he finished making notes. Then I’d stood and dropped the coat.
And that is what I wanted now. I wanted it. Sudden sex, immediate gratification, no prelude.
“What did you bring?” Tom asked, looking around for a package of some kind, I supposed.
“Me.”
“Well, that’s lovely.”
“Well, no. The surprise is . . . can we go up to your bedroom?”
He actually blushed. For a terrible moment, I thought he was going to say, “Well, I’m sorry, Betta, but I’ve got someone here. I wish you’d called.” But he didn’t say that. He let me in and gestured, boylike, toward the stairs. I started up.
My heart was racing in the loveliest of ways. And for the first time, there was no ambivalence in me. John used to call me controlling sometimes, even in affection, and I supposed I was. I felt much more comfortable being the one to initiate things. But I was still alive, I still wanted all the things I could have. And here was one of them, an attractive man moving up the steps behind me in the slow and measured way of someone who knew exactly where he was going.
I took off my coat and lay down on his bed. He hesitated, then stretched out beside me. He smiled and stroked my cheek. “This really is a surprise.” He dimmed the bedside light. “I’ll need to . . . get ready.”
At first I was confused, thinking he didn’t want to undress before me. But then I realized he meant condoms. I felt deeply embarrassed. I had no diseases! But of course condoms would protect me, too. They were the modern version of walking on the street side. Oh, I hadn’t counted on this. I’d forgotten how dangerous the times were, how far from the time when I’d met John. “Okay,” I said. “Well, I’ll just wait for you!”
“You might get undressed,” he said.
I thought of the care with which I’d selected my underwear, how I’d imagined his appreciative eyes on my breasts held just so inside the brilliantly designed brassiere.
“All right,” I said.
But it came to me, as I pulled my clothes off and put them in a neat pile on the floor, that all of this was not so much about sex. Despite the racy images I’d revved myself up with on the way over, this was about something else. When I was in sixth grade, I had a textbook that showed two Neanderthals, a man and a woman, standing at the mouth of their cave. Outside a storm raged. Wild animals roamed. Danger was everywhere. The man and woman offered each other a naÏve and specific sense of safety. They held hands and stared out at all they seemed to protect each other from, at least for the moment. On their faces were wonder and relief.
At 4 A.M. I heard the clock on my mantel strike again. I lay wrapped in my tangled sheets for a while, then gave up trying to sleep and went downstairs to look for the book I was currently reading.
When Tom had come back to his bed, he’d been wearing a black, hooded bathrobe that I found both ominous and silly-looking. What was he, a boxer? He took off the robe before he got under the covers with me. On his half-erect penis, I saw a yellow condom, and for one brief moment, I felt like vomiting. But then I slid myself beneath him and sighed contentedly, relishing that familiar weight. We kissed, and this was enjoyable. We caressed each other, and this too was enjoyable. And then, when I thought enough time had passed, I tried to signal that I was ready. The problem was, he was not. Nor did he become so. No matter what I did, no matter what I did, he did not become so. After a while, he pushed me onto my back, laughed against my shoulder where earlier I had put a bit of perfume, and mumbled, “Sorry.” He hesitated, then started to move down, kissing my chest, then my stomach, but I pulled him back up, perhaps a bit too aggressively. “It’s all right,” I said, and then his phone rang and I felt sure, I was positive, that it was divine intervention, a throwaway favor in the face of scorching humiliation. “Go ahead and get that,” I said, and he said, almost at the same time, “I think I’d better answer that.”
He’d gone downstairs to talk, ignoring the bedside phone, and I realized that what I did not know about him was vast. How many condoms were left in the box, for example? I’d dressed by the time he returned and refused his offer of a conciliatory glass of wine. I told him I’d see him on Saturday night, when he would be posing as Matthew’s uncle.
“I’ll call you before then,” he’d said. “Maybe we can do something.”
I’d answered, brightly and insincerely, “Do!” but I’d thought, The hell we will. Then I’d thought, I will never tell anyone about this.
I found the book I was looking for on the kitchen table. But before going back upstairs, I went to the Chinese chest and sat before it. I leaned my head against the deep drawer holding those many slips of papers, those words that I wanted so much to understand but, for the most part, could not. “John,” I whispered. “I need you.” The clock chimed the quarter hour—gently, it seemed to me, even apologetically—but that was all I heard. I looked around the room. The absence of movement was all I saw. Tomorrow, I would be so tired. Already, I was.
Late Wednesday afternoon I lay on the sofa reading. I could hear Benny sighing in the kitchen as he did his homework, and finally I went in to see what the problem was. I hoped he wasn’t doing math. Last time I’d helped him, we’d gotten an F.
“Benny?” I said. “How are you doing?”
“Terrible.”
“What’s up?”
He didn’t answer.
I sat in the chair opposite him, reached out to touch his arm.
“Deborah wants to break up with me,” he said.
“Deborah?”
“Yeah. My girlfriend.”
“The one who—”
“I never told you about her. Because she’s the one I really liked, and I just didn’t want to tell anybody about her. But we’ve been together for almost a month, and now she wants to break up with me.”
“I’m sorry. Is it because of those other girls?”
“No, she thought that was funny. But there’s this other kid? John Hansen? He really likes her? And he talks to her all the time even though he knows she’s my girlfriend? She told me a long time ago she can’t stand him. But now she likes him and not me anymore. That’s what she told me today. And John Hansen was, like, all watching us.”
He tapped his pencil rapidly against the table. He looked very close to tears. I supposed I should say something about time healing all wounds, that there would be another girl, that there would be many other girls. Instead, I said, “So . . . you really feel bad.”
“Yeah,” he said. “And I tried to be, like, so what, but it didn’t work.” He searched my face. “Do you think if you fall in love twice, the first one wasn’t real?”
“No. It doesn’t mean it wasn’t real. Most people love more than once in their lives. I think you will, too. And what I believe about love is that any kind is good. And the thing about life is, you never know what’s around the next corner.”
He sighed deeply. “Betta?”
“Yes?”
“Could you make prime rib tonight?”
I laughed. “Really?”
Finally, he smiled. “Yeah. It’s my favorite food.”
I stood. “Okay, Benny. Let’s go to the grocery store.”
As we were putting our coats on, I said, “What do you want with your prime rib?”
“Twice-baked potatoes and Caesar salad. If that’s okay.”
“It’s fine.” I grabbed my purse and we ran out to the car. “So, when they ask you what you want to be
when you grow up, what do you say, ‘Gourmand’?”
“What’s that?” He shivered, and I turned up the fan, though all it was blowing out was cold air. Turn up the steam! my old-world grandfather used to say, never understanding that you had to let a car warm up first. His impatient genes lived inside me, insisting on repetitions of behavior without regard for logic.
“A gourmand is a food lover,” I told Benny. “Is that what you’re going to be?”
“Nah. I want to pitch for the Yankees. A-Rod made twenty-five million last year.”
As we drove down the street, he leaned back in his seat. “This is awesome,” he said. “Deborah could never do this.”
Do what? I wanted to ask. Drive? Cook? Listen to your troubles? But I just said, “I know. She’s really a terrible person.”
“See?” he said. “You know that and you never even met her.”
“Sometimes,” I told Delores, “I feel like I’m forgetting him already. I remember what he looked like, I don’t mean that, but certain other things, little things. I just don’t remember anymore.”
“I know, honey.” She reached over to squeeze my hand. “Sorry. Got some egg salad on you.”
It was Friday afternoon, and we were out for what Delores had called our annual Christmas lunch. It made for a kind of panic in me, thinking about what the holiday would be like without John. Thanksgiving hadn’t even registered; Carol had invited me to come with her and Benny to her sister’s house; I’d declined and had spent the day in peaceful solitude. But Christmas was different. So pushy.
“Are you doing anything special on Christmas Day?” Delores asked.
I shook my head, looked down.
“Now listen,” she said. “You might want to be alone, and I respect that. But if you don’t want to be alone, then you call me, all right?”
“Yes.”
“Well, you don’t have to call me, I suppose, but I want you to call somebody. Lot of times you can feel like people don’t want to be burdened with you at holiday time, but that’s not true. Families like to have outsiders over. Keeps ’em from fighting with each other so much.”
I took a last bite of potato soup and pushed my bowl away.
Our waitress came over, a too-thin but beautiful, brown-eyed young girl whose hands had trembled as she took our order—first day, she said—and asked if we needed anything else. Both of us declined, and then when we put our money down, I saw we’d both done the same thing—tipped her excessively. “ ’Tis the season,” Delores said. “Every year I say it’s not going to get me, and every year it does.”
“I know.” In my car were two gigantic tins full of cookies. I was on my way over to Matthew and Jovani’s. At home there were seven more tins.
Jovani answered the door, visibly upset.
“What wrong?” I asked.
He motioned impatiently for me to come inside. “I’m tell you the whole story. But short! Because always is the same story.”
I followed him into the living room, where Matthew sat reading from one of his textbooks. “Hey, Betta,” he said. “What’s in the tin?”
I threw the cookies over to him, and he began eating them immediately. “Good!” he said, crumbs flying from his mouth.
Jovani wandered over to him, his hands on his hips, but declined when Matthew held the tin up to him.
“Later, when my stomach it’s not volcano,” he said.
I sat on the sofa, slid my coat off. “So what happened, Jovani?”
“All right,” he said. “You look on my face. What have you find?”
“Well, I . . . I see a very nice-looking young man.”
“Do you see on here ‘little too much enthusiasm’?”
I laughed. “No.”
“Well, that is why I’m not hire. They think I’m too much enthusiasm.”
“It’s your shoes,” Matthew muttered, not looking up. “I keep telling you, man. You can’t apply for a job, especially selling men’s clothes, wearing sneakers.”
Jovani came to sit beside me. “They are not even looking on my shoes. Only on my face, where I am too much enthusiasm. I am only happy and passionate man, and that they don’t like! They want only mannequin, to hang clothes from. To talk to customers like funeral.”
From upstairs, I heard the sound of the shower turn off. Melanie, I assumed. I looked over at Matthew, who said in a low voice, “We’re all set for Saturday, but just barely. I had to tell her we’re going to a really good restaurant in Chicago. Will your friends go along with that?”
“Of course,” I said.
“Tonight, I cook,” Jovani said. “You come, you won’t believe. We having for drink puma’s milk. We have empada, for main dish is frango ensopado, we have alongside coconut rice, and for dessert Maria bonbons.”
“Jovani!” I said.
“Inside me, many surprises,” he said. “Nobody see.”
“Well, I see.”
“So maybe you hire me. I make your business blow up.”
“You know,” I said, “I may just do that. I’m thinking about opening a store. But it would be a store called What a Woman Wants. Do you think you’d like to work there?”
He showed me his palms. “Am I not?” he said. “What she is want?”
I heard the stairs creak, and Melanie came into the room. She ignored me so completely I almost admired her ability. “I’m ready to go,” she told Matthew.
Matthew flipped through his book. “Three more pages to finish the chapter,” he said. “Is that okay?”
“Mattie . . .”
He closed the book and went for his jacket.
“Melanie,” Jovani said. “Tonight I am cook. Would you like also to join us dinner?”
“No,” she said. “I’m busy tonight.”
“But thanks,” I said, and she turned around to glare at me.
“I was going to say that.”
On Christmas Day I found Lydia in the recreation room, seated in the far back, while the rest of the residents were gathered close around the piano. A tall, older man wearing a burgundy suit was playing with the unbounded voluptuousness of Liberace and singing loudly, his head thrown back. He was still handsome, still had a thick head of beautiful white hair. A sign sat on the piano: BERNSTEIN ENTERTAINMENT. The people sang along, in less-than-robust voices, to “I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus.”
I tapped Lydia on the shoulder, and when she turned around and saw me, she frowned. I held up the tin of cookies, and she hesitated, then took it. She pointed to the hall and I wheeled her out there. Over her shoulder, she asked, “Did you ever hear such caterwauling? Thank God you got me out of there. Take me to my room.”
Once there, she had me station her in the corner. She wore tan pants that were far too short, revealing the same kind of gray knee-socks she’d been wearing last time I saw her. She’d gotten a new pair of sneakers, apparently; they were a startling white, massive-looking on her narrow feet. She wore a man’s green plaid flannel shirt, buttoned to the top but still loose around her neck, and her tan cardigan sweater, a bejeweled Christmas tree pinned to it. I knew the pin had not been her doing—many of the residents wore them, so the home must have handed them out. I suspected they had put it on when Lydia wasn’t looking. Now she opened the tin and looked inside. “What’s this?”
“It’s Christmas cookies. I thought you might enjoy them.”
She stared at me suspiciously, reptile-like, and I had to restrain myself from grabbing her glasses so I could clean them; they seemed to be begging me. Lydia dug through the cookies, examining this one and that. Her knuckles were huge, arthritic, I thought, and I saw that her hands still trembled. “I suppose you want one,” she said finally, and I said no, I’d had plenty already.
From down the hall came a man’s voice, loudly chanting, “Orange juice! Orange juice! Orange juice!” He went on and on. Lydia waved her hand in his direction. “Every day. He lives on the other side, with the crazy people. He’s just over here because their shower room i
s having problems again. If they’d hire a decent plumber, they’d get the thing fixed.” She popped a tea cake into her mouth, and through her gnarliness, I thought I saw a quick flash of pleasure. “Did you make these?”
“I did.”
“Well, I never saw the reason for all the fuss.” She pulled her handkerchief from her sleeve and honked her nose.
“Well, one reason is that it’s kind of nice to give them away. The other reason is that they taste good.”
She nodded, pushing the handkerchief back inside her sleeve. “I suppose they do.” She replaced the lid. “Now. What else do you want?”
I laughed. “Nothing.”
She was still for a moment, then asked with some irritation, “Why do you keep coming back? You’re not going to get a thing from me. And you can’t like me.”
“Well, Lydia, it isn’t easy, but I kind of do.” We had a neighbor, when I was growing up, who was generally regarded as impossible. Ball Man, he was called, for the way he would confiscate anything that landed on his lawn. He was an emaciated old guy, stoop-shouldered, bewhiskered with gray stubble, and bald but for a few strands of hair that sometimes were pushed over the top of his head but most often hung at the sides. He wore the same outfit all the time: a T-shirt tucked into too-large dress trousers that were belted high on his waist, and run-down slippers. I saw him only when he came out for the newspaper and the few times he left the house, when he wore a sport coat over his T-shirt and a battered hat with a feather. He fascinated me. I tried to no avail to win him over, leaving butterscotch brownies in his mailbox, ringing his doorbell to ask if he’d like me to pick something up for him at the store, or to rake his leaves, even asking him unlikely questions about whether he’d like to help send our fifth grade to Washington. ‘No!’ he would say. ‘Beat it! Don’t come around here anymore! Stop ringing my doorbell!’ I never got anywhere with him, but I never stopped trying. “She ought to be a psychiatrist,” my father said about me. Instead, I married one. He could do all the work; I could hear all the stories.