Heft (4 page)

• • •

I
spent all of Saturday stewing in my worries, speculating
about Charlene’s intentions in sending me the picture of her son. I ate a great deal. I wondered if I should call her on the telephone. I didn’t.

I ruminated for a while on my size. There is a game I play in which I attempt to justify my weight. I’m six feet and three inches tall, so sometimes I tell myself that I’m
burly
or a
big guy.
Both conjure images of health and fun. A woodsman, a football player, a Newport News commercial, for heaven’s sake. Some football players weigh close to four hundred pounds. But football players also have arms that are huge, huge, & legs that are like tree trunks.

But I carry most of my weight in my gut, & no part of me has ever been firm. Since the age of ten, I’ve been fleshy & great, with soft arms and legs, dimpled knees, fingers that look like sausages. At this point my gut has expanded to the point of grotesquerie. My gut hangs down between my legs when I sit down. I pull my pants above it & that is the other difference. Acceptably fat men wear their pants below their guts. I knew I was unacceptably fat the day I bought pants big enough to accommodate my girth someplace above my navel, pants manufactured for men like me. Obese men. I try to deny it, to catch myself looking normal at certain angles in my front window. But for the little one over my bathroom sink, I do not keep mirrors. I do not like walking past them & catching accidental glimpses of myself. When I need to see myself I use the three-paneled window, facing Fifth Street, that serves this purpose after the sun sets. Dark on the outside, light on the inside: Arthur Opp at his window, turning and turning as if he is upright on some invisible rotisserie. (The neighbors probably think I am very strange!) I do this for a reason: it is so that I can keep track of my size, so that I don’t wake up one day unable to walk.

After several hours of this sort of self-pitying reflection I had decided that, in the end, it would be very bad to see Charlene Turner again. I had thoroughly convinced myself that I should not be seen by anyone.

But then everything changed, for then my telephone rang again. & this time I knew it would be her.

“Arthur Opp,” I said.

“Can you believe it,” said Charlene.

I was wary of her. I said no I could not.

“He’s in high school, can you believe it?”

Once more I said no.

“Isn’t he something,” said Charlene.

This went on for a while until finally I felt I could safely assume that she hadn’t sent me a picture of her son out of a desire to silence me or because she wished for me to stop sending her letters. I was quite relieved.

But for the second time I heard something in her voice that was deeper & slower than it should have been, & this made me concerned. Then again I have spent so long recalling Charlene Turner at twenty that I suppose it was unfair of me to expect her to sound just the same.

Such a long silence ensued that finally I felt I had nothing to lose by asking her whatever I pleased. I felt I had permission to & a right to. So I asked her why she had never told me about him & she let out a very long sigh.

& then she told me a story. Many years ago, she said, but not too long after the last time we saw each other, she married a man named Keller with whom she was not in love. She had not wanted to tell me. (I became dizzy thinking up reasons why.) She continued to write to me as if nothing had happened. Soon she had a son, but—because of her prior omission—could not find a natural way to tell me about him. So she never did, and so on: she & her husband divorced. She didn’t tell me. She was left with his name—she is Charlene Turner Keller now. She never told me. She raised her son alone. She didn’t tell me. “You’d love him,” she said firmly, on the phone. & I believed I would. Kel Keller. An odd, endearing name.

Then she came to the meat of it, & the reason for her contacting me, & the reason that I am now quite alarmed.

She said he wasn’t doing very well in school but would be getting ready to apply for college soon. She said he had lots of friends but maybe needed a little bit of guidance. She told me I was the smartest person she’d ever met which meant more to me than I can possibly convey. & she told me that I was the first person she’d thought of. “Reason I called you,” she said, “is this. Do you think you could help him?”

“What does he especially need help with?” I asked her, & she said college applications. She said he was very unfocused. “He plays baseball,” she said. “He’s got baseball on the brain.”

“I see,” I said, & looked frantically about my house, & clutched the hem of my shirt in my right hand in dread.

“We could come to you,” said Charlene. “Whenever it’s best.”

“I’ll have to look at my schedule,” I said.

At this point I was sweating. Several thoughts occurred to me simultaneously: among them, what I would tell Charlene when, inevitably, she asked me why I’d stopped teaching.

But all she said was, “All right. Look at your schedule,” she said, “and then call me back.

“I’ve told him all about you,” she said.

When we hung up I could not catch my breath & I could not imagine what I would do. There were a few things to immediately consider:

1. The pleasure that having Charlene & her son in my life would afford me

2. The fact that I have become very used to my little life, & that it is not after all a bad one

3. All the little exaggerations, all the omissions, all the outright lies I’ve told her in the many letters I’ve sent her over the years

4. But at least she too has been less than truthful

5. The appearance of my house, its disrepair

6. My own appearance

7. When I answered the phone it took me a moment but then her voice came through the wires like electricity & I knew who it was without asking

8. When she lost touch many years ago I thought it meant that she had forgotten me. But as it turns out she has not forgotten me & has been thinking about me. She said it to me. O just like that.

After mulling things over for several hours, I decided upon an initial course of action.

•

Writing the letter & confessing some version of the truth was the first step. For while the idea of doing it gave me a great deal of anxiety, the thought of simply having Charlene & her son appear on my doorstep—of throwing the door open & saying Look at me, look at my house—was infinitely worse.

The second involved readying both of us as much as I possibly could in case Charlene still decided to come. To prove to myself that I was serious, I did something very frightening. I opened the phone book and ran my finger down a list of cleaning services until I found one deplorably named
Home-Maid.
I called them & asked if they had somebody who could help me.

Yes, they said. Her name is Yolanda. She’s coming tomorrow.

& no one has been in this house for seven years.

• • •

Dear Charlene
, I wrote,

It would give me a great deal of pleasure to invite you both to my home & to meet Kel. I would be happy to provide him with any counsel I might be able to give. I agree with you that there are few things more important for a young man than a good education, & although certain aspects of the application process have changed since I taught, I believe I might still be able to offer some advice on schools or take a look at his essays. It would be lovely to see you too after all these years.

That said there are several things that you should know. I have changed quite a bit since you last knew me. By this I mean that I have gained quite a bit of weight. I say this so that you won’t be shocked.

I have also—I am embarrassed to say this—I have also been untruthful in several ways over the years. I do not travel, really. I do not keep in touch with any of the other professors I once knew, nor any of the students. My friend Marty Stein, of whom I frequently have spoken, died in 1997. I do have a brother named William but we are estranged, & I am also estranged from my father. My mother is dead. I have no children, sisters, aunts, or uncles. At one time I had friends but now I rarely go out & I rarely have visitors. I am 58 yrs old now.

I do not know why I lied. Perhaps it was to have something interesting to tell you in my letters. Our correspondence has been very dear to me. I wish to make a fresh start now & to form a friendship with you based on truth. The one thing that gives me hope is knowing—I hope you will forgive me for saying it—that you, too, have had your secrets. I do not hold this against you. I hope you can forgive me as well.

Please consider this an invitation to come over anytime you like. I will wait for your call or your response.

Fondly,
Arthur

Then I opened my front door & put the letter in my mailbox & tipped the happy little red flag up.

• • •

T
oday marked the first visit of the girl from Home-Maid.
Yolanda. I spent the morning thinking of what to wear. I couldn’t bring myself to do the wash, the wash being located inside of a closet that is not very maneuverable. Instead I took each one of my seven shirts out from the closet and laid them on my bed & inspected them for lint, holes, food, stains, & odors. The winner was my blue shirt so I put it on, making sure to align the buttons properly, & wetted a comb & ran it through my hair, & washed my face and hands as I was taught to, scrubbing behind my ears, scrubbing my nails especially.

I arranged myself on my couch: a glass of ice water placed virtuously on the end table, my glasses at the tip of my nose. I was reading something I thought would be impressive, a fat book on politics.

Noon came and went. I waited fifteen minutes & then began having a dream of Chinese food: the greased and glowing kind, unnaturally orange chicken with sesame seeds nestled in its crevices; white rice in buttery clumps that come apart wonderfully in the mouth; potstickers, ridged and hard at the seam and soft at the belly; crab rangoons, a crunch followed by lush bland creaminess; chocolate cake—nothing Chinese about it, but the best dessert for a meal of this kind, the sweet bitterness an antidote & a complement to all that salt.

Suddenly I became afraid of opening the door. I said a prayer that she wouldn’t come. I lifted my phone & had the idea of calling this agency, Home-Maid, & telling them that I had fallen ill and couldn’t have company. Before I could do this the doorbell buzzed.

I froze. A thrill of adrenaline went from my nose to the tips of my fingers. For what felt like an absurd amount of time I sat on my couch and did not move; I held my book before my face and looked up at nothing. Upon her second buzz I rose from the couch, rocking in place once or twice for momentum. I shuffled toward the door, still carrying my book. I was breathing hard; a drop of sweat rolled down my back.
Coming,
I said, so quietly that she might not have heard me.

I opened one half of the great double door. In front of me stood a little girl: she looked so young that at first I took her to be a lost child, the wrong person entirely. But she was wearing a uniform, a stiff, light blue dress with a white collar and pockets at each hip, like what waitresses wear in country diners. She was so tiny that it was too big for her. The shoulder seams were too wide for her shoulders and the waist was low, like the waist of a flapper’s dress. The hem too fell farther down her legs than seemed natural. A black purse hung off a long strap on her shoulder. On her feet were pink sneakers with little white stars on the tongue. She was looking at me wide-eyed, perhaps in terror.

“Yolanda?” I said.

She nodded.

“I’m Arthur Opp,” I said.

She nodded again. She had no coat & she was clutching her arms to her sides and clasping her hands in front of her.

“Please come in,” I said.

•

When she stepped inside my house a kind of spell was broken. My pulse increased; I felt a tumbling-down inside of me, & then shame. I looked at my surroundings frankly. The girl was still silent. She was standing on her tiptoes slightly, as if she were afraid of fully committing to the job.

“This is it,” I said rather lamely.

She turned toward the piano. She approached it tentatively, placing her feet one in front of the other, heel to toe, a shy awkward walk. She held her arms out slightly from her sides like a gosling. When she reached it she touched the top of it with one finger and left a dark & dustless mark—a gesture that at first seemed rude to me and then simply inquisitive.

I wondered if the place smelled bad. I imagined that to an outsider it would smell like food & dust & stuffiness, the hot oppressed smell of a house that gets no air. I should have opened all the windows, I thought, but it was too late.

I’d done my best to clear up all the food and the containers I had lying around, but I had missed several things that now sprang to my attention. Hiding in the floor-to-ceiling bookshelf was a take-out box with a metal handle. Above & below it were books in disorganized piles. Papers and mugs and little useless things like pennies and straws. Small piles of receipts had somehow found their way onto every available surface; I suppose I put them there whenever a delivery person hands me one. One end of the dining room table was drowning under papers and boxes. Scads of plastic bags hung off the backs of the chairs. Years ago I wrapped several towels around the newel at the base of my staircase for reasons I no longer recall; they have remained there ever since, stiffening with age. Worst of all: the piles of papers that have somehow accumulated at the perimeter of every room. Junk mail & magazines & books; newspapers & napkins & menus that had all somehow become invisible to me in the past decade. Part of the scenery.