Chilly Scenes of Winter (8 page)

He looks out the window at the thermometer. Twenty-five degrees. He knocks on Susan’s door.

“Do you want to go out for something to eat?”

“Sure,” she says. She comes out. She has on the purple sweater. There is a small bump just above her lip.

“I’m glad you’re not just hanging around waiting for her to call,” Susan says.

He hadn’t thought to do that. It’s a good idea. He should wait. Eventually Laura will call. Maybe when Jim leaves the house for a minute … and who knows when that minute will be?

“I’m going to write Sam a note, in case he wonders what happened,” Charles says. “Poor Sam. I hope he doesn’t have pneumonia.”

“He’s got a good appetite, at least,” Susan says.

“Yeah. We’ll bring something back.”

“I’m glad we’re not setting out for dinner with Pete,” Susan says.

Charles leaves the note on the dresser next to Sam, figures that he’ll never see it, scotch-tapes it to the television screen, over Lauren Bacall’s face. He puts on his jacket again, holds the door open for Susan. It is cold enough to wear his face mask, but his face mask frightens him. It has frightened him ever since he saw a television news program about bank robbers. The bank robbers had on face masks, imprinted with reindeer and diamond shapes. Charles always thinks he’s a bank robber who will be caught when he wears his face mask. He also takes his hands out of his pockets when he passes a policeman. Otherwise—and he knows this is silly—he thinks that the policeman might think that he’s hiding something. Still, his feet move all wrong when he passes a policeman. He weaves and stands too straight, and he’s sure they’ll stop him for questioning. When he drives, if he sees a policeman parked off the road somewhere in back of him, he keeps looking in his rearview minor. Sometimes he even checks the mirror if he passes a steep hill or a curve in the road off which they might be hiding. Once when he was eighteen years old he was pulled over by a policeman for speeding. He stopped so suddenly when he saw the blue light that the police car almost rammed him. The policeman was very jittery when he got out. “Pull over slowly when you see that light,” the policeman said. Charles tried to say “Yes, sir,” but he couldn’t speak. He gave the policeman his license and registration. His hand was shaking wildly. The policeman looked at his hand for a second before he took the two pieces of paper. Then he shined his flashlight in the back seat of the car, and on the passenger’s side. Charles watched the beam, transfixed. The policeman stood there, flashlight shining. Then he said, “Wait here,” and disappeared. He came back with a ticket. Another policeman came with him and shined a light across the back seat again. They both walked away. Charles stuffed the ticket in his pocket without looking at it, turned the key and got ready to pull out. He pulled out right in front of the police car, cutting them off. The blue light went on again, but when Charles pulled over, they only pulled up alongside him. “What the hell’s the matter with you?” the policeman hollered. He didn’t wait for an answer. He tore off, blue light still on. Charles sat there, his leg jerking too wildly to drive. “Satisfaction” came on the radio. It was the first time he’d heard the song. It didn’t help to calm him. Nothing did. When the song was over, his leg was still shaking, and he felt too light-headed to drive. He thought about dragging himself from the car somehow and crawling to the pay phone that was right in front of him to call Sam for help. Then he started talking out loud to himself, and that helped: “Okay, okay, it’s just a ticket. They’re not coming back. Take it easy.” In a few more minutes he was able to drive. He had been on his way to an anniversary party for his parents at their best friends’ house. When he got there he went to the bathroom, and without realizing what he was doing ran the water and took a shower. He didn’t realize how strange that was until the host asked, “Were you showering, Charles?” when he came out of the bathroom with his hair soaking wet.

Charles pulls up in front of a Chinese restaurant, The Blue Pagoda. There is hardly anybody inside. Two booths and two tables have been taken. The ashtrays on all the tables are blue. There is a small paper umbrella stuck in the top of the salt shaker. The waiter quickly removes it when he puts down the menus. When he returns he has blue napkins and chopsticks. They order: pork-fried rice, moo-shu pork, spareribs. “No egg drop?” the waiter says. “Egg drop,” Charles says. “No egg drop?” the waiter says. “Wonton?” “That will be fine,” Charles says. Faintly, Charles can hear Donovan singing “Mad John.” It’s so faint that it might be Muzak, not Donovan at all. And Charles might be imagining that the words are being sung. A couple with a child comes in and sits at the booth in back of them. “This
is
a German restaurant,” the father says to the little girl. “It’s Chinese!” the little girl says. “If they don’t have sauerbrauten, you’ll just have to suffer,” the father says. “Sit up straight,” the mother says.

“Wonton?” the waiter says, putting the bowls in front of them.

“That’s right,” Charles says.

“Just made fresh?” the waiter says.

“Fine,” Charles says. The waiter only knows how to speak in the interrogative.

“You eat Chinese food with Doctor Mark?” Charles asks.

“I don’t think we’ve ever gone to a Chinese restaurant.”

“I thought that was what people who were in love did.”

“What?” Susan says.

“Listen to music, go to Chinese restaurants … that kind of stuff.”

“You always pretend not to know about things. You’re in love with that woman. Do the two of you go to Chinese restaurants?”

“She eats with her husband.”

“When she wasn’t with him. You always pretend that that time didn’t exist.”

“I don’t want to talk about her tonight,” Charles says. “I know she’s not going to call.”

Susan slowly sips soup. “I feel sort of bad about leaving you,” she says.

“Why?”

“Oh, I don’t know. That woman’s sort of rotten to you, and I’ll be leaving you with Sam sick. And her in the hospital.”

“Your staying wouldn’t make Laura leave her husband or Sam get well, and it certainly wouldn’t spring her from the bin.” Charles doesn’t want her to leave.

“I guess you’re right. Are you going to be polite to him when he comes?”

“What do you think I’d do? Act like some outraged lover?”

“I’m afraid you’ll make wisecracks. I know you don’t want him to like you.”

“I don’t think there’s much chance of that.”

“You always put yourself down. You always act dejected.”

“I’m a mess.”

She laughs, sucking spinach into her mouth.

“Hot?” the waiter says, putting the plates in front of them. He puts the dishes on the table, puts his hands on his hips, and says, “Okay?”

“Fine,” Charles says. “Thank you.”

“Thank you?” the waiter says, leaving. He stops at the next table. “You’re not German!” the little girl says.

Once he and Laura went to a Spanish restaurant where the waiters poured a thin stream of white wine into their mouths from a leather wineskin. They ordered saffron rice and mussels and ate large, dark rolls. Laura told him that food started tasting entirely different to her after she stopped wearing lipstick. He wishes he could do something that would make him enjoy his food more. He eats all the time, but most of the time he hardly tastes it. His grandmother used to serve chicken bouillon before the Sunday dinner to “make the tongue buds blossom.” She always invoked strange metaphors: “Think if the earth were a big shoe and all that snow coming down was shoe polish.” To this day, he feels that snow is a call to action.

“I was thinking about Grandma,” Charles says.

“I don’t remember her very well.”

“I remember her smelling things. She always had her nose in the steam from a soup pot, she always thought their cat smelled bad, even when Grandfather had caught it and washed it, she always wore heavy perfume. What do you remember about her?”

“That her drawers were full of magazines she tied together in bundles and that she never untied the bundles. She always had things tied together. She’d tie two packages of paper napkins together with twine and put it on the kitchen shelf.”

“She was nice,” Charles says.

“Yeah. She was very nice. I remember that blue and lavender dress she made me. When it was washed the colors ran and made the lace blue, and she cut it all off and sewed white lace on.”

Their grandmother died in her seat at a movie theater. There was a special movie about Greece. Men were there to show the movie and talk the audience into going to Greece. Everyone in the audience knew that she had died, and afterwards, their mother heard, more people than the men expected signed up on the spot for the trip to Greece. She was sixty-eight when she died. Their grandfather died two years and one day later. He was crossing the street with a bottle in a brown bag and a loaf of bread in another brown bag when a truck hit him. The truck was full of wheelbarrows that it was on the way to deliver to a hardware store.

“Almond cookie?” the waiter says, putting down a plate with four cookies on it.

“Tomorrow we’ve got to go see her, don’t we?”

“Yeah. I’m not looking forward to running into Pete. He called today and told me I was a son of a bitch.”

“He did not.”

“He did. He said that I made him feel guilty. He called back and apologized.”

“Was he drunk or something?”

“I guess so. I don’t blame him.”

“These are good,” Susan says. “Almonds are supposed to keep away cancer.”

“I thought that was apricot pits.”

“Maybe you’re right,” Susan says, crunching into the second cookie.

“I saw a picture in a magazine of some Mexican doctor who injects people with apricot-pit extract. People go there and live in trailers and get injections. I hope if I get sick I don’t get crazy like that.”

“If I had it, I’d do anything. I’d go to Lourdes. I’d do anything.”

“How the hell did we get started talking about this?”

“I probably started it. I’m so used to talking about diseases all the time with Mark.”

“What conclusions has he come to?”

“You’re not going to be nice to him, are you?”

“I told you I was. He’s just a jackass.”

“One of the doctors he knows has a theory that the cells react to music. He’s trying to get a grant to play music to diseased cells.”

“I’m sure hell get it. There are a lot of jackasses out there waiting to give other jackasses money.”

“You’re so smart,” Susan says.

“I’m not so smart. I’m just not a jackass.”

“Are you sure it’s okay for me to leave?”

“Sure,” he says. “What color is the Cadillac?”

“Maroon.”

“Maroon. Jesus Christ.”

They pay the bill and leave The Blue Pagoda. It is bitter cold, and nobody is on the street. Charles drives down to the newsstand across from the train station and gets the late paper. A baby is on the cover: “First of 1975.” He looks at the weather forecast, holding the paper near the floor so that the car light shines on it. Snow. He does not want to go back to work. He wants the car to hurry up and get warm. When they get home Sam is still asleep. On the note on the television is written: “Pete called.”

“I forgot to get him food,” Charles says to Susan.

“He’s out for the night,” Susan says.

“Should we try to wake him up to see if he’s alive?”

“No,” she says. “He’s okay.”

He is glad Susan is there. She doesn’t tell him what to do much, but sometimes she does, and that makes it easier.

FIVE

A
t lunch time (if only it were eleven again, instead of twelve-thirty) Charles goes alone to a restaurant at the end of the block. He orders a well-done cheeseburger, a salad without dressing, and a Coke. He thinks if he eats salad without dressing that when he eats it with dressing again it will taste good. All of the food is terrible. He oversalts it and is thirsty all day.

“Gimme a nickel,” a black kid says to him as he walks back to the office, “and I’ll do a somersault in the air for you.”

Charles gives the kid a quarter. “You don’t have to do a somersault,” he says. The kid flips in the air.

“That’s amazing,” Charles says.

“My brother’s working on a double flip,” the kid says, and walks away to accost another man.

Back at his desk early, Charles puts on his earphones and turns on his cassette player: “Folk Fiddling from Sweden.” After he has listened for a few minutes he dials his number.

“Hello?” Sam says groggily.

“I woke you up,” Charles says.

“Glad you did. I was having nightmares. I dreamed you and I were hunting wolves, and there were so many of them we didn’t know where to start, and if we didn’t start soon …”

“God, I hope I don’t catch this,” Charles says.

Sam is panting.

“Is there anything you want me to bring you back tonight?”

“Can you get me some Mr. Goodbars?”

“Mr. Goodbars? They’re no good for you when you’re sick.”

“Maybe they’ll finish me off and I won’t ever have to go back to work.”

“I know what you mean,” Charles says.

“Susan’s doc didn’t show. She’s still here.”

“Is she disappointed?”

“Doesn’t act it. I’m not exactly too sensitive to the state of others right now, I guess.”

“Take aspirin. She’ll bring it to you.”

“She does.”

“Well, I’ll see you tonight.”

Charles hangs up. If Laura isn’t still sick—she can’t still be sick—she’ll be leaving her house in an hour to pick up Rebecca. Lucky Rebecca. If Rebecca grows up to be like Laura she will be a heartbreaker. Maybe he will become like Humbert Humbert and get Rebecca. Because it certainly doesn’t look like he’s going to get Laura.

A woman from typing comes in to pick up two reports to do for him. The woman has on a blue dress that is unfashionably short and heavy black boots pulled tightly over her heavy legs. But her face is pretty. She was Laura’s friend. He wants to think that she knows all about the two of them, but Laura said that she never told anybody. He wishes she had; then he wouldn’t doubt, as he sometimes does, that it happened at all. He and the woman could exchange secret, knowing glances. Laura, they would both be thinking. She walks out with the piece of paper, and he looks at the big black boots walking across the blue carpet. Laura always dressed beautifully. She had suede boots and several pretty dresses, just a few but very pretty, and she always looked very delicate. Her husband is nicknamed “Ox.” Charles has not gotten back to work, and he has been at his desk for fifteen minutes. He has just cheated the government of five minutes. He cheats it of another two, turning his chair to look out the window, playing a little game and imagining that when he turns around Laura will be there, even though he knows that he would see her reflection in the glass if she were there. Even though she cannot be there, because she is getting ready to go for Rebecca. He wishes he were Rebecca’s father. If he were her father and Laura were her mother they could be a family. They are already a family: Laura, Rebecca, and Ox. He imagines with horror that when he turns around they will
all
be there, that he will actually have to face that fact. He turns around immediately and looks at the piece of paper on his desk.