As Stavros locked the apartment door behind them, she asked, “Where do you live?”—half dreading he still lived here.
“I’m almost embarrassed to tell you.” He looked at the ceiling. “Six floors up. But my mother doesn’t have keys. When I go out of town, the super waters my plants.”
“You’re a gardener, too?”
“I am not,” he said, though he sounded regretful. “I have a cutting of my mother’s philodendron that all the mythical heroes I’m reading about couldn’t begin to kill, and I made the mistake of starting an avocado pit last year. It won’t stand up anymore without the support of an exercise bike I never ride, but somehow I can’t bear to put it out of its misery.”
On the sidewalk, she was about to say good-bye when Stavros said, “I haven’t asked how you’re doing. How are you doing?”
“I’m doing fine,” she said. “Except . . .”
He waited. She sighed. “Except that my mother-in-law is coming this weekend to take away half the furniture.”
Stavros frowned. “Because . . .?”
“She thinks Jonah’s death is my fault.”
“Excuse me?” he said loudly.
“I can’t explain, it’s too complicated. The worst of it is, she used to like me, so the thought of seeing her this way . . .”
He said, “Would you like me to meet her and let her in?”
She thought about this for a moment. “You know, if you could just . . . be around. It’s a huge favor, but she’s so angry and I’m afraid she might . . .”
He looked at his watch. He touched Fern’s shoulder. “I’m late for my class. I’ll call you tomorrow and figure it out.”
That was exactly what she needed: someone to figure things out. Even just the superficial things. And that was how it began.
“I’M NO DOCTOR, but this is what I prescribe.” A glass of white wine and a stack of antique dessert plates seem to glide in from nowhere, landing on the counter beside her pie. A silver pie spade, its handle engraved with pansies.
Fern looks at the wine with longing. “Maybe three ears of corn will cancel it out.” She hasn’t touched alcohol in months and wonders if this one dose will send her, like a slingshot, into a state of abrupt, extreme inebriation. She takes a sip and turns around to smile at Fenno.
He is looking straight at her belly. “Five months?”
“You’d be an expert, wouldn’t you.”
“Unwitting amateur.”
She cuts the pie in quarters, the quarters in half.
“That looks lovely,” says Fenno.
“I like hearing men use that word. It sounds so sweet.”
“Well sweetness, that’s not a virtue of mine.”
Fern looks at him. “I don’t know. Look at what you’ve agreed to do for this girl . . . what’s her name?”
“Oneeka.” His expression betrays that it’s taken him time to say this name without risking laughter.
“You could easily have refused her; it sounds like ‘labor coach’ wasn’t a part of your job description.”
“No, but I have to admit to a prurient interest—though I’m touched by her trust, and I like her. Childbirth is hardly something I’d otherwise witness. And then of course, I’ll have no responsibility for the baby.”
Fern pries the first slice free and cradles it onto a plate. “I wouldn’t count on that. I bet she makes you godfather. Or names it Fenno, if it’s a boy.”
“God, I hadn’t thought of that.”
“I hope you like children,” she teases.
“In fact I do. It shocks me sometimes.”
“Are you one of those men whom everyone clamors to have as a godfather for their kids? I’ve noticed it’s sort of the rage nowadays: the bachelor goddaddy who gives the most money and the most imaginative presents.”
“The godfaggot, you mean. The fairy godfather.” He laughs. “Well, nieces, I have plenty of those—as you may have gathered from my extremely stoned brother. I do love his daughters, all four of them. He likes to joke that he doesn’t have to feel politically guilty because he and his wife simply co-opted my reproductive allotment. I told him that would be one baby, not two, and he told me that though it might be hard for me to face, my abstinence was depriving some poor woman somewhere of having her baby.”
Fern spoons whipped cream onto five neat slices of pie, then leans against the counter and sips her wine. The sensation is extraordinary, like testing the ocean in May, feeling the icy cold rush up your legs and thrill its way into your bloodstream. She feels as if she’s just waking up, glad to be in this kitchen with this man—and not looking forward to joining the others again. “But how often do you get to France?”
“I see them in Scotland, at Christmas, sometimes in the summer. And my brother back home, he and his wife have twins. A boy and a girl.”
Fern is amused and touched by his obvious pride in these other people’s children. Would she look this way if she mentioned Heather’s sons? “How old?” she asks.
“Wonderful ages—three, six, seven, and nine. Or maybe, when they’re not yours, all the ages are wonderful. I have this idiotic fantasy that some of them, someday, might come over and stay with me, maybe to study.” He picks up three plates. “Let’s taste your creation, shall we?”
As they enter the dining room, Richard is saying, “The great news is that viral counts are down, but Y2K fears are through the roof. On the beach, it’s like, all these people who last summer thought they were going to die are now just worried their stockbroker’s system is going to crash. Like suddenly everyone’s getting so healthy and paranoid all at once. It’s sort of funny.”
“Hardly everyone,” says Fenno as he sets a plate in front of Richard.
“Pardon me?” Richard says brightly.
“Not everyone is getting so suddenly healthy.”
“But everyone’s on that new cocktail now . . .”
Fern has always been appalled by that infelicitous term; before AIDS, didn’t drugs come in protocols and regimens, with appropriately military connotations? Fern the ex-waitress sees that old bar tray of twists and wedges, olives and onions, cherries more livid than neon. A tray of frivolous options, which these men don’t have.
“Everyone isn’t. And on it or not, people are still dying all over the place. Perhaps fewer people we know, but they are.” Fenno says this wearily and not unkindly, as if it’s something he’s obligated to say.
“Tell you what,” says Tony. “Let’s talk about Y2K. Now there’s a fresh subject.” He digs his fork into his pie and takes a large bite, closes his eyes and murmurs loudly, “Mm, mm, yes.”
Richard laughs, relieved. “Well the really scary thing I’ve heard is that, you know those rusty old missile silos in Russia? They’re going to blow because they’ve been totally neglected. Like, because the cold war’s over we’re going to be nuked by those guys.”
Dennis says, “Oh I seriously doubt that.”
“Why? All the genius geeks are too busy fixing stuff on Wall Street. I’m telling you, that’s all my clients talk about: like what if their stocks go poof?”
“Poof!” Tony echoes mischieveously.
“You should take this stuff more seriously,” says Richard.
Tony touches him for the first time that Fern has noticed, clamping a hand on his shoulder. “Well I am glad you do. But if we’re all going to go poof, what’s the point of preparing for the future, taking all your courses?”
“Well the truth is, you never know, do you?”
“Now that is the truth,” says Tony.
Dennis looks down the table at Fern. “Lass, this is a heavenly tart you’ve made us. Just brilliant.” As Fern thanks him, he peers across at Richard and points at his plate. “But you, you’ve hardly touched yours!”
Richard looks at Fern and makes a despairing face. “I’m sorry, I know it must be scrumptious, but did I taste lard in here?”
“God, I’m sorry,” says Fern, though she knows she shouldn’t fee
l bad. No one told her she’d be feeding a vegetarian. No one told her a thing about what to expect of this evening; no one could have.
“A dab of pig fat won’t make or break your karma,” says Dennis. “And if it will, I’ll jolly well eat your portion.”
“Stop behaving like an ass,” Fenno says, so quietly he might almost be addressing himself. But it’s clear to Fern that he regards Dennis and his giddy indiscretions through the eyes of a father, not a brother. She thinks for a moment of her own brother Forest and his incessant judgments.
Richard has just slid his plate across the table to Dennis. Dennis freezes for a moment, the plate between his hands. “Sorry,” he says, but defiantly. He stands and carries the pie into the living room, closing the door behind him.
Fern excuses herself to go to the bathroom. When she comes out, she hears her name, whispered loudly several times. Dennis sits in the dark of the living room, half-submerged in one of Ralph’s plush white chairs. “I feel just rotten,” he says.
Fern isn’t sure how to reply.
His face is unclear in the gloom. “You know, all that insensitive AIDS talk—my brother’s lover died of that. And he was one of those chaps who held on for years, way before these new drugs . . . I ought to have stood up there somehow. . . . Ohhhhh.” With a mawkish sigh, Dennis rubs his face. “Oh dear but I am out of practice at this state of being.” He giggles abruptly, reminding her how stoned he is. “Better get a little sea air. Ventilate my wonky brain.” He isn’t quite looking at her, and she wouldn’t be surprised if he’d forgotten her presence as he stands unsteadily and goes out to the porch.
The dining room has emptied. On the table remain the bowl of roses, already beginning to droop, and four discarded napkins. A fifth lies on the floor. Crumbs wait to be brushed up, a tendril of smoke drifts from an extinguished candle. The front door bangs shut.
Fenno is at the sink, rinsing dishes. Without a word, Fern opens the dishwasher and reaches to take the first glass.
“Here we are again,” he says. “Like survivors of a shipwreck.”
“Did Richard leave in a huff? I would have.”
“Richard? That boy gets the gold medal for imperturbability. Or simple obtuseness. No, they went for a walk; Richard said it’s essential to ‘fully metabolize the food, jazz up those antioxidants!’ And you know Tony.”
“Habitual prowler.”
They smile at each other, relaying dessert plates; the dinner plates, with their gold rims, will have to be washed by hand.
“When I’m with Tony, sometimes I feel like part of a collection,” says Fern.
Fenno nods.
“He holds onto everyone he’s ever loved. Or who ever loved him. He never lets you go.”
“No he doesn’t,” Fenno admits. “Tenacious—in a backhanded way.”
It occurs to Fern that Tony cares for lovers the way he cares for other people’s bedrooms: undependably while he is there but then, once he leaves, making sure to tidy up, polish the dresser and press the linens. She remembers what Dennis told her about Fenno and wonders if Tony’s ever watched a lover die. No; that would never befall the fortunate Tony.
Fern and Fenno are quiet now as they work. She sponges down the counter and the stove. He washes the fancy plates, the massive corn pot, the wooden-handled knives. She pours soap into the little boxes in the dishwasher door. He takes the wine bottles to the mudroom, to their appointed recycling bin. She locks and turns on the dishwasher, regretting the way its rumble drowns out the soothing whispers of night. The symphony ended some time ago; once the kitchen was clean, the house fell silent.
“Where’s my brother got to?” says Fenno when he returns.
“He went to the beach. To clear his head. He’s a little mortified.”
“Bloody hell,” says Fenno. He walks quickly back out through the mudroom. Fern follows. The moon is bright, and a glint of gold attracts her eye to the abandoned plate, not a crumb left on it, balanced on the porch rail. Fenno stands amid the white chairs, frowning out at the view. “Bloody, bloody hell.”
“He won’t drown,” she says. “He’s too alert for that.”
“That’s not what worries me,” says Fenno. “I haven’t seen him like this—like some teenage pothead—for years, but he’s been acting absurdly juvenile ever since he got here last week. Twenty years ago when he acted like this, he’d go out and make a very public fool of himself.”
Down across the lawn, through the hedge, along the emerald tennis court, she can still hear that damned dishwasher grinding away, louder than the ocean, like a conscience that refuses to quit.
SEVENTEEN
FERN IS CERTAIN THAT JONAH did not kill himself. First among those who are certain that he did is his mother, who finally came right out and accused Fern of driving him to it by ignoring all the warning signs. How could any wife be so blind to such perilous despair, such hopelessness?
And how could any mother accept that her son might die by such a ludicrous mishap? This was how Fern excused Jonah’s mother’s behavior.
It did not help that the police reached no clear conclusion. Or that Jonah had no life insurance to force a conclusion. His keys were on his dresser in the apartment. His wallet, with money and cards, was in a pocket on his pulverized body. Leaning out their kitchen window the day after the fall, Fern showed the police a fairly broad ledge (structurally pointless, she thought, except to the birds) that ran at floor level along the courtyard wall. By their living room windows, it met the back fire escape.
Soon after moving in, Fern had accidentally locked herself out of the apartment in her nightgown. Their newspaper had been left on a neighbor’s mat, and as she went to retrieve it, their door blew shut. Two hours later, Jonah found her sitting there, perusing, out of desperate boredom, the Automobiles section. He annoyed her by laughing, but he told her that, aside from never leaving without her keys, she might want to know about a backup scheme the previous tenant had used: Climb out the hall window, take the ledge past their kitchen to the fire escape, open a living room window. Fern looked at the ledge. “Are you nuts? Have you done this?”
“No,” said Jonah. “But it’s good to know about.”
“Right,” she said. “I think I’d rather read car classifieds.”
Jonah was not daring by nature, but in their last months together, Fern thought his judgment seemed poor or inattentive. She no longer let him shop, because more than once he came home with bruised or wilting produce. He gave money to the infamous beggar who claimed, year after year, all around town, that he needed busfare to make it upstate to his big break in repertory theater. And he lost an essay he’d been working on for two months when a thunderstorm stunned his computer. He hadn’t made a backup. “Are you nuts?” Fern heard herself say too often, too meanly. Perhaps this was what Jonah’s mother meant when she said Fern was heartless, but this did not drive him to suicide. Jonah might have been dismayed, and dismay might have made him absentminded, but he wasn’t hopeless, not yet.
Stavros sat quietly on her couch that night while she talked to Jonah’s sister, then to Heather, Anna, and her parents. He went with her to the police station and sat quietly on benches in two dreary hallways while she looked at Jonah’s body and then answered questions. He did not read or talk on the phone or pace. He simply sat. How respectful, Fern thought when he rose to take her home.
Unlike the police and Jonah’s mother and her friends and siblings and parents, Stavros asked no questions—except, more than once, whether she would be all right. She asked him to come by and look at the ledge. Yes, he had heard about the previous tenant’s balancing act (the man had a wife who sometimes bolted him out). “The guy was a lunatic.” Stavros made Fern lean out the window beside him. He laid a hand on her back, as if she might need to be anchored. “See all that pigeon shit? Slick as oil, I promise you that.” Starting the next day, of course, the window was nailed shut; often now, the hall smells stale, of garbage and the neighbors’ cooking.
&nb
sp; When Jonah’s mother came to take his things, she came with Jonah’s sister. Fern had always liked Jonah’s mother, mainly for her strong, outspoken persona; she wasn’t a woman you’d want to offend. The mother, once so fond of Fern, now embraced her with clear reluctance; the sister—whom Fern had never liked—barely said hello. She carried a stack of flattened cardboard boxes and a bag of moving supplies. As he had promised, Stavros came over; when the women arrived, an hour late because of Saturday traffic in the Lincoln Tunnel, Stavros was reading the newspaper on Fern’s kitchen counter. As it was morning, Fern realized this gave the wrong impression entirely, but there was no room for explaining. Stavros said how sorry he was. He said he’d thought they might like some assistance. Jonah’s sister gave him a long steely look, but Jonah’s mother put on a conspicuously brave smile and thanked him. Fern remembered Jonah’s perfect manners and felt a shiver of sorrow. She did not miss him, but she felt the loss of something irreplaceable in her life, even in her heart.
Stavros packed Jonah’s clothes in a suitcase (they fit into one), and he helped Jonah’s mother pack the books and the contents of his desk. Frequently, she excused herself and went into the bathroom; in vain, Fern tried not to hear her modulated weeping. Jonah’s sister, who spoke perhaps seven words to Fern in the three hours she was there, wrapped pieces of furniture for the movers. Fern said nothing when she wrapped the green damask sofa.
The four of them worked mostly in silence; Stavros, the outsider, spoke the most often because he needed instruction. Fern was terrified when he offered to go out for sandwiches; relieved when Jonah’s mother wondered aloud how anyone could think of eating at a time like this. Nevertheless, when Fern was in the bedroom alone, having remembered the drawers in Jonah’s nightstand, his mother came in and closed the door. Dramatically, she even stood against it.