Dive From Clausen's Pier (14 page)

We both smiled. “What is it with him?” I said. “I mean really.”

She shrugged. “Same thing as it is with me—a combination of bad luck and bad breath.” She gave me a look: she’d had a one-night stand with some asshole who’d asked her to brush her teeth before they fucked. One thing about Jamie: in the right mood she could laugh at herself.

She took a step down, then stopped again. “Actually, I’m sorry about something else, too.” She hesitated. “When we first got here and I said you were a busy bee.”

I touched the neckline of my dress, a black U against my untanned skin. Shortening the dress had been nothing, but chopping off the sleeves had been a big gamble. It was just right now: a summer dress freed from too much black stretch cotton. I looked at her. “You weren’t making fun of my dress, you were making fun of me.”

She blushed. “I know, I wasn’t thinking.”

“What do you mean?”

She shook her head. “Never mind,” she said, and our eyes locked for a moment before we continued on our way.

I worked, I visited Mike, and I sewed and sewed: new curtains for my apartment and then a throw for the foot of his bed, a red-and-white checked rectangle that I filled with cotton batting and machine-quilted. I was at House of Fabrics so often one of the saleswomen started calling me honey. My sewing machine was out all the time, sitting at the head of my table; I ate on my couch, bowls of cereal, potato chips, whatever I could
pull from a cabinet and consume as is. I drifted through my job, so deep into autopilot Viktor started giving me worried looks, coming over and jostling my elbow if I stood in one place for too long. After my week away Miss Grafton had brushed off my apologies, but now she seemed leery of me, stayed a couple yards away when we had to talk, as if she might catch whatever I had.

During the days Mike wore a sweatsuit, the most comfortable thing for physical therapy, loose and unconstricting and easy to adjust underneath him so creases wouldn’t press into his skin, start sores he couldn’t feel. The jacket had long sleeves, and I hadn’t seen his bare arms in weeks until I arrived later than usual one evening, after everyone was gone and he’d been changed into short-sleeved pajamas, and found that his forearms had thinned and hardened into the subtle curve of pure bone, with nearly the same paleness.

I met his eyes and then looked away. I couldn’t help myself: I looked at the floor, the window, at Jeff Walker lying half asleep in his bed, the remote for the ceiling-mounted TV held loosely in his hand. When I looked back Mike was looking right at me—his eyes narrowed, his mouth slack with unhappiness—and for a moment I couldn’t speak.

“Hi,” I managed at last, and I crossed to the bed and kissed his cheek. “Sorry, I had to work late.”

He frowned. “You don’t have to come every night.”

“I want to, you know that.”

“I don’t know why.”

“I love you? Could that be it?”

“You loved me. Now you just feel sorry for me.”

He stared hard, and I felt he’d tossed the remark out to see what it would catch, how persuasively I could deny it. I had a sense that half of him wanted me to fail, so he’d know he was really at the bottom. Yet I felt strongly that it wasn’t true, that I did still love him—that since the showdown with Rooster I loved him, if not more, then better than ever, clearly, without the fog of my own wants, the tedium of needing to be loved back, of needing to be
thrilled
. Just love, the pure thing: one heart uncurled toward another. That could be enough, couldn’t it?

“That’s not true,” I said.

“One of these days it will be. You think we’re going to have a fun life together? You, me, and my wheelchair?”

“Mike, don’t.” I put my hand on his shoulder. “Really. Let’s just see what happens, OK?”

“It already has happened. It’s over.”

My legs went cold. “Us?” I said.

“No, me,” he said. “Me. Obviously.”

“Oh, Mike.” I’d been sitting in a chair by his bed, and now I stood and moved closer to him. Against the white sheets his skin looked pearly gray, a faint flush of emotion coloring his face. His pajamas were the old-fashioned kind, the first real pajamas he’d owned in years: red-and-navy striped, with navy piping along the collar and at the cuffs.

I looked away, and the TV caught my eye, hanging in the center of the room. Before dozing off Jeff had chosen an old Western, and I watched while tiny horses moved across tiny plains.

Then a commercial came on, and I felt Mike’s attention tune in, too. A couple in bridal clothes came out of a church under a shower of confetti, moving arm in arm. I felt Mike taking it all in, the bride with her radiant face, the groom beaming, the happy people looking on.
I think he was actually really
worried
about something
, Rooster’d said. Oh, yes. I turned back to the bed and looked at him, his face cut into separate pieces by the steel of the halo. If his next words were
Let’s get a minister over here and get married tomorrow
, I would say yes.

C
HAPTER
10

Inside a narrow doorway, metal-edged stairs led up to the Stock Pot, a crowded, three-room café that was famous for soup. They served hot chowders and bisques in winter, cool gazpachos in summer. I sat at a table by the window and looked out on to State Street. On the sidewalk in front of the Athlete’s Foot, the juggling guy juggled oranges, his arms flying. You saw him all over town, barefoot and bearded: juggling fruit, bowling pins, even squat, multicolored candles. Rumor had it he’d been around for decades, so stoned he hadn’t heard the bad news that the sixties were over.

Ania appeared at the table smiling, her broad shoulders pulling at the sleeves of her black T-shirt. She’d called the night before, suggesting lunch, and while I’d been happy to hear from her I was sure Viktor had put her up to it.

“I can’t believe how long ago your dinner was,” I said once we’d said hello and she’d sat down. “I’ve been wanting to have you guys over to my place, but—”

She shook her head. “Please, you have been very occupied, there is no need to apologize. Tell me, how does everything go? Viktor is a very poor carrier of information. He tells me your friend is moved to rehabilitation, but not
how things are.”

“Just the facts, ma’am.”

“That’s right,” she said with a smile. “And the facts are where I want
to begin, not end.” She leaned forward and widened her amber eyes. “Don’t you think this is one of the main differences between men and women? Men want the facts”—she pounded the table—“and we want what’s between them, the interesting air circulating around them.”

“The truth,” I said. “I guess that’s sort of right.” I thought of how, just a couple days ago, Mike had casually mentioned that Rooster was taking Joan sailing the next day. “So they’re in a relationship?” I said, and he said yes as if it were the best-known thing in the world, as if he’d never been anything but forthcoming about it.

“Maybe men stick to the facts as a way of controlling us,” I said to Ania. “I just thought of this. We’d prefer the truth and they know it, so they withhold themselves from talking things over and analyzing them because it gives them power over us.”

She grinned. “You must come to my women’s group. What do you say? You’re perfect, you’re the neofeminist. It’s every other Tuesday night, we take turns hosting. You must.”

“I don’t know,” I said uneasily. “I’ve never really been in any groups.”

“This is not a prerequisite,” she said. “It’s very casual—just eight or ten women talking. You like to talk.” She wagged a finger at me. “I know you do.”

I studied her: her wide Slavic face, her pale, yellowy cat eyes. She was wearing clunky, heavy-soled sandals, didn’t shave her legs. In my floral slip dress and crisscross platforms I felt prissy and excessively got up, like some ridiculous flamboyant bird.

“I’m at the hospital every evening,” I said. “I really can’t. But thanks.”

She shrugged, and I thought I saw something flicker across her brow—perhaps the bit of interest she’d had in me as it faded away.

We had just gotten our lunches when Jamie and her mother came into the café. Though she’d continued calling, we still hadn’t gotten together for a meal; now here I was with someone else.

I turned to look out the window and put a hand up to shield my face. Down on the sidewalk the juggling guy was gone, replaced by a pair of sorority girls holding cans of Diet Coke.

Reluctantly, I turned back. Jamie and Mrs. Fletcher were two tables away, and Jamie was waiting to catch my eye. She gave me a forced smile, then turned away.

“A friend of yours?” Ania said.

I nodded.

“She is not having a very good day, I think.”

When we were done I took Ania over to the Fletchers’ table to say
hello. Jamie chewed her salad briskly, as if she were so involved with her lunch that it was too much trouble to show an interest. “My husband is working with Carrie,” Ania said by way of explanation, and Jamie nodded offhandedly.

“Viktor. I know.”

Mrs. Fletcher gave me an uneasy smile. She seemed older than she had the last time I’d seen her, softer and more wrinkled. There was something fearful in her shy brown eyes. “Can you girls sit?” she said, patting the chair next to her. “I haven’t seen you in so long, Carrie.”

Ania looked at her watch. “I am having to return to work, so I’ll say goodbye.” She turned to me. “Please stay if you like. And thank you for meeting me.”

I wanted to walk out with her, but Jamie’s eyes bored into me. Instead I said goodbye and watched her go, her long braid motionless against her back.

“She seems nice,” Mrs. Fletcher said. “So polite.”

Jamie rolled her eyes. “ ‘I am having to return to work.’ Who talks like that?”

“She’s Polish,” I said. “English isn’t her first language. Didn’t you notice her accent?”

Jamie stabbed a mushroom slice and put it in her mouth. “Whatever.”

Mrs. Fletcher looked away. She seemed out of place in the noisy Stock Pot, the only person present over forty as far as I could tell. She wore a short-sleeved white blouse with a notched collar, a tiny enamel butterfly pinned to one lapel. “Polish,” she said thoughtfully, reaching for her glass and taking a sip of iced tea. “I wonder if she has a good recipe for goulash.”

Jamie put her forehead onto her palm and shook her head.

Mrs. Fletcher’s face pinkened slightly, and I wished I’d left when I could have: now it was too late to do anything but sit in the chair she’d offered me. She met my glance and smiled sadly, then put her soft, freckled hand on my arm and gave it a pat. “I’ve been thinking of you so much, Carrie,” she said. “How are you?”

“I’m OK.”

“And Mike?”

“He’s working hard,” I said. “He’s hanging in there.”

She shook her head sorrowfully. She wore her thin hair in a new style, shorter and with the bangs grown out, a girl’s mock-tortoise barrette holding them off her face. “Jamie says you’re at the hospital all the time.”

I looked at Jamie. She was stirring sugar into her iced tea, her expression unreadable. “Well,” I said to Mrs. Fletcher. “You know.”

She nodded. “He must be getting so much strength from you.”

I sat with them while they finished their lunches, and then we all headed outside together, the sun shining hard on the crowded sidewalk. We made our way around the corner, to where Mrs. Fletcher’s big paneled station wagon was parked.

“Don’t be such a stranger,” she said to me as she unlocked the door. “You come see me without Jamie sometime.” She tilted her head and looked at me. “Say, you don’t play bridge, do you?”

I glanced at Jamie, who rolled her eyes again. “No, I don’t.”

“Darn. One of the girls in my bridge group moved to Fond du Lac, and we’re having the hardest time replacing her.” She smiled and got into her car, then slowly negotiated her way out of the parking space, inching forward and backward until the nose of the wagon was angled way into the middle of the street.

“And such a good driver,” Jamie said under her breath.

“Be nice.”

We watched as her mother drove away, her brake lights flashing hesitantly as she neared the far corner. Finally she turned, and Jamie let out a big sigh. “Do you think she’s
on
something? Does she talk incredibly slowly or is it just me?” She ran the toe of her sandal along a crack in the sidewalk. “One of the
girls,”
she went on. “She’s forty-seven years old.”

I turned and looked her over, the short sleeves of her Cobra Copy T-shirt rolled as high as they’d go, exposing her thin, pale arms. “What’s the matter?” I said. “What were you doing having lunch with her, anyway?”

Jamie frowned. “Talking about Lynn. Sul-Lynn, I should say.”

Lynn was Jamie’s younger sister: she’d graduated from high school in June and was waitressing at a restaurant on the far west side, no plans to go to college.

“What about her?” I said.

“Her general idiocy.”

“Jamie.”

She’d been standing with her hands on her hips, and now she flung them to the sides. “She’s like a thirteen-year-old too dumb to finesse her curfew! Every night Mom stays awake until she hears Lynn on the stairs, and then every morning she calls me to complain the minute Dad leaves the house. Now she wants me to talk to Lynn.”

“Are you going to?”

“Fuck, no.”

We were standing in front of a short flight of concrete steps that led up to a hat store, and abruptly Jamie sat down on the lowest one. After a
moment I sat, too, and gave her shoulder a pat. Across the street, a couple in matching tie-dye came out of a used record store, and we watched as they kissed and then walked slowly toward State Street, their arms wrapped tightly around each other. Next to me, I felt Jamie sizing them up—the girl’s long, snarly hair and bare feet, the guy’s leather bracelet and dirty-looking, colorful cap. I felt her disdain, and I felt her arrive nonetheless at the fact that the two of them were in love and she wasn’t.

“So did
you
call
her?”
she asked.

“Her?” I said, gesturing with my chin at the hippie girl, though I knew she meant Ania.