Chilly Scenes of Winter (37 page)

“What’s new?” she says to Charles. She looks like she expects to hear the worst.

“Not much. Back to work and all that.”

“I can’t seem to do my household work,” she says.

“That’s all right,” Pete says automatically. “If you’re going to get all confused when you get out of bed, I’d just as soon have you in bed.”

“I get confused,” she says to Charles.

“Yeah?” he says.

“Don’t I?” she says to Pete.

“We don’t want to dwell on this,” Pete says. “Aren’t you mighty glad to see Charles?”

“I know it’s Charles,” she says. “I’m not confused when I’m in bed.”

“Can I fix coffee for anyone?” Pete says.

“No thanks,” Charles says.

“Susan wrote me a nice letter,” Clara says.

“Mommy
mislaid
it,” Pete says.

“Oh. That’s nice,” Charles says. “How is she?”

“I want you children to keep contact. You do keep contact, don’t you?”

“Sure we do. I was just talking to her on the phone,”

“I talked to her on the phone,” Clara says. “It was in the day, and Pete doesn’t believe me.”

Pete turns red.

“What did she have to say?” Charles says.

“Mice and rice and everything nice,” Clara says. Charles looks at the floor.

“Say,” Pete says. “What about a look at a little something I’ve got?”

“What’s that?” Charles says, playing dumb.

“Come on, come on, don’t tell me you’ve forgotten.”

“A death car,” Clara says.

“A Honda Civic,” Pete says, louder than Clara. “Come take a look.”

Charles walks in back of Pete, out of the room and down the stairs.

“Here,” Charles says. “This is to celebrate the new car.”

“What’s this?” Pete says. “Hey! Turtle Wax!”

Charles nods.

“I knew you didn’t really forget. Say, thanks a lot. What do I owe you?”

“Nothing,” Charles says.

“Come on.…”

“Really, it’s a present.”

“Hell,” Pete says. “My own son couldn’t have given me anything I wanted more.”

Pete puts the bag on the hall table, puts on his coat and walks outside.

“She’s much worse,” Charles says.

“She’s out of her goddamn mind, to be honest with you. She gets up and flips around like a fish when I’m not there. Not that water ever touches her. I have to do that once a week. Throw her in. What else can I do?”

“Christ. Have you spoken to a doctor?”

“No. I don’t want to.”

“Why not?”

“What are they going to do but take her to the hospital? Then what happens? I’m there all the time, the house is like a tomb.…”

“What if she does something to herself?”

“She’d forget what she was doing if the knife was poised at her heart. Really. You can’t imagine what bad shape she’s in.”

“I think I get the idea.”

“I’m not calling any doctor,” Pete says. “I’m not going to run back and forth to the hospital. They don’t do anything for her there, anyway. Put her in a room with a murderer.”

“How do you know that?”

“That foreign broad told me she was a murderer. Showed me all these photographs of kittens and puppies, one hand showing the picture, the other clutching her throat.”

Charles sighs. They are standing in front of Pete’s Honda Civic.

“You know what my consolation is?” Pete says. “You want to know what my one consolation is?”

“What?”

“That car,” Pete says. “Well. It’s very nice.”

“That car must get a thousand miles to the gallon. I get in that in the morning and just leave the past behind.” Charles smiles.

“I do. You don’t believe me?”

“Sure.”

“Sure is right That thing gets a thousand miles a gallon.” Charles stares at the little white car.

“Looks like a whale, doesn’t it?” Pete says. “Friendly like a whale?” Charles resumes his smile. “Wait till I take that wax to her. Some shine.” Pete unlocks the car. “Take a sit,” he says. Charles sits in the car. His legs are cramped. “What a beaut,” Pete says. Charles gets out.

“So what brought you by?” Pete says.

“Just wanted to give you the Turtle Wax.”

“Jesus, that’s very nice of you. When I saw you standing there I thought: he’s come to tell us he’s getting married.”

“What? Why would you think that?”

“I thought for sure. I don’t know.”

“I’m not getting married,” Charles says.

“If you were my own boy I’d pry,” Pete says. “Ask what happened to that California honey.”

“She went back. She’s a lesbian, anyway.”

“What?”

“Yeah.”

“You’re kidding me. How’d you meet one of those?”

“Long time ago. When she wasn’t.”

“No kidding,” Pete says. “Must make you feel bad.” Charles shrugs.

“Whew,” Pete says. “Glad I don’t know her.” He shakes his head sideways.

“I guess I’ll be getting home,” Charles says.

“Don’t bother to go back in,” Pete says. “She’ll have all her clothes off.”

“What do you mean?”

“Every time you have—I don’t mean you, I mean anybody—anybody has a conversation with her and they turn their back, she’s as naked as a jay.”

“Pete, you’re going to have to do something.”

“I’m sitting tight. I know eventually I will.”

“Well. Call if you need me.”

Pete nods. Charles shakes his hand.

“See you,” Charles says.

Pete stands on the sidewalk waving as he pulls off. He waves back, and lets out a long sigh when he turns off their block. His father is dead, his mother is crazy, Pete is all alone. He puts on the radio for the appropriate song. It is “Rocket Man” by Elton John. He listens to the radio and worries all the way to Wicker Street. Once again there is no parking space on Wicker Street. He parks on the same street he parked on the night before and cuts through an alley to Wicker Street, holding the tulips, in their white bag, inside his coat for extra warmth.

Laura opens the door wearing a black sweater and a long gray skirt. He is so surprised by how beautiful she is that he forgets to hold out the bag of tulips.

“Hi,” she says.

“You’re beautiful,” he says. “These are for you.”

“Oh, thank you.”

He walks into the apartment. Incense. He watches her put the bag on the floor and pull it apart at the top. “Tulips! They’re beautiful!”

“They’re in a thing. A container. So they won’t die or anything.”

“Thank you, Charles. It’s so gray out. These will be beautiful.” She looks around for a place to put them, settles on the coffee table.

“Your roommate studying again?”

“Yes.”

“Do you really have a roommate?”

“You don’t believe I have a roommate?”

“I don’t know.”

“I do. She’s at the library. She studies there until midnight. Sometimes later.”

“Did I make you mad?”

“No,” she says. “It was just a foolish question.”

“What’s that on the stereo?”

Damn! He was going to bring her records. He was right in the store and he forgot. “Keith Jarrett.”

“Beautiful,” he says.

He sits on the sofa. The two black lines have not yet done in the rainbow. “Would you like a drink?”

“Yes,” he says.

She goes into the kitchen and takes a bottle off the counter and pours scotch into a glass. She drops in an ice cube. “Just scotch, or water with it?” she says. “Just scotch.”

“I might have a job,” she says, handing him the glass. There is writing on the glass: Hot Dog Goes To School. A dog, knees crossed, is beaming. He holds a piece of paper that says 100%.

“A job?”

“A job selling cosmetics.”

“Oh. Would you like that?”

The perfume in his mother’s room … Pete throwing his mother in the bath.… “It’s a job.”

“When will you hear?”

“Tomorrow.”

“Then you have to wait home for the phone call?”

“Yes,” she says. “You’re not very subtle about playing detective.”

“If you’re here I can call and say good morning. I like to hear your voice.”

She sighs. He looks at the window—the cracked glass. A nightmare: he had some nightmare about that glass. He takes her hand.

“If I’m not all smiles it’s because I just visited my mother,”

“How is your mother?”

“Loony.”

“But, I mean …”

“She’s loony and well cared-for. She’s stopped bathing, and I think she’s stopped getting out of bed.”

“What is your stepfather going to do?”

“That’s a funny way to think of Pete. I always think of him as Pete.”

“What’s he going to do?”

“Nothing, he says. Unless she gets unmanageable.”

“That’s so awful,” Laura says.

“I shouldn’t tell you my problems. You’ve got enough of your own.”

“I’ve got a job, probably. What problems do I have?”

“You’re feeling good now?” he says, his mood lifting.

“No. Heavily ironic.”

“Oh,” he says.

“Would you like another?”

He gives her the empty glass. The ice cube hardly melted at all. It is the last scotch he will drink.

He looks at her standing in front of the kitchen counter, pouring. He stares at her ass.

“I’ll tell you something funny. My boss asked my advice today about his son, who wants—in this order—to get into Harvard and an electric blanket.”

She laughs. “What advice did he want?”

“He seemed to want to know if there were some poets who advised young men not to worry about getting into Harvard.”

“Were you able to help him?” She is coming back with the drink. The drink is yellow. Her sweater is black, her skirt gray, her boots black, her hair brownish blond. It is Laura.

“You must have been,” she says, “with that grin.”

“Actually, I was. I recommended ‘Get It While You Can’ by the late, great Miss Janis Joplin.”

Laura nods. “A fine selection. Sure to change his thinking entirely. Then all he’ll yearn for is the electric blanket.”

Laura has fixed herself a drink. “You don’t mind eating a little late, do you?”

He shakes his head no. She is really quite beautiful in profile.

“You’re smiling too much,” she says. “You’ve had enough scotch.”

“No,” he says. “I’m just smiling.”

The radiator hisses. He looks at the plant hanging in the window above the radiator and at the yellow tulips. There is loud applause as the record ends.

“Jesus,” he says, stroking her shoulder with his free hand, “I’m going to get that dessert.”

“I didn’t realize you liked it that much.”

“I was wild for it. I crave it constantly. A riddle: how is orange and chocolate soufflé like Laura?”

She sighs again. “You’re so subtle,” she says.

“You’re so lovely. Imagine a taxi driver getting lucky enough to pick you up.”

“Enough! I don’t want to hear any more about the taxi driver.”

“Imagine
me
being that lucky. When I was that lucky.”

“I’ve never understood why you like me so much,” she says.

“I know it. And you always talk about my ‘liking’ you. You won’t even say out loud that I love you.”

“I don’t understand why you love me.”

“The orange soufflé.”

“Sometimes I think it really is something as crazy as that You love me because of a dessert I make. The recipe is in a cookbook.”

“I looked through all the ones at my house. I couldn’t find it.”

She laughs. “That’s the one book I took, I think.”

“You do have the recipe here, don’t you?”

“If I don’t, I can remember it.”

“Tell me. Tell me how you make the orange soufflé.”

“You’re kidding me.”

“No. I want you to tell me.”

He closes his eyes.

“You peel four oranges and … I can’t tell you. I’m embarrassed.”

He opens his eyes, drinks more scotch. “You peel oranges … go on.”

“I can’t. I feel too silly.”

She laughs. She has big front teeth. He loves her. “Then I’m going to watch you.”

“You can watch if you don’t talk. I don’t want you to embarrass me. Then I wouldn’t be able to make it.”

“No! You can’t threaten me about the orange soufflé. You promised you’d make it!”

“You’re crazy,” she says.

“I am completely normal. So normal that others come to me for advice. My own boss, for example. I know more than my boss.”

“You don’t know how to make dessert I’m the only one who knows that,” she says.

“No kidding around. I want that dessert”

“Would you like me to make the dessert and forget about dinner?”

“Yes.”

“Seriously?”

“Yes.”

“Okay,” she shrugs.

“And I’m watching,” he says.

“You’re drunk, I think.”

“I’m not. If I were drunk I’d be on a talking jag. When you go into that kitchen I am going to stand there and be utterly silent.”

“You’ll have to say something. Otherwise I’ll get nervous.”

“When you want me to talk, hit me with an egg.”

“I’m serious,” she says.

She gets up and goes into the kitchen. He follows (far enough behind to stare at her ass). He sits in a chair. He gets up, pours a glassful of scotch, sits in the chair again. Laura takes a white pot out of the cabinet, opens cream and pours it in, puts it on the stove.

“Say something,” she says.

“I was thinking about that snow fort we discovered in the park that winter when we had a bad storm. How strange it was that no kids were in it, just a big white enclosure.”

She jiggles the handle of the pot on the stove, stares into it.

“Which further made me think about not being able to get to work because of the snow, and how bright the glare was that day in the apartment”

She opens the refrigerator, takes out a carton of eggs.

“In support of the fact that I really am crazy, I never called you—except that once—when you went back.”

“I don’t know why I did,” she says. She is separating eggs. The yolks slide from the shells into the bowl.

“And that, in turn, made me think about you running out in the kitchen naked for something to eat, and me finding you jumping around in misery in front of the refrigerator. You couldn’t decide what you wanted, but your feet were cold.”

She laughs. She begins to whip the egg yolks. He takes a long drink of scotch, thinking how good the orange soufflé will taste.