The Collected Stories of Deborah Eisenberg (29 page)

“Unfortunately, it’s not the greatest timing,” Donna said. “Everything’s all sort of set up now.”

“But if we could just meet,” Patty said.

“I could give Fletcher your number,” Donna said.

“And you know what?” Patty said. “My roommate’s a writer. And he’s had a lot of journalistic experience.”

“Well,” Donna said, “the problem is, Fletcher already has a lot of writers.”

“I understand,” Patty said. She took a deep breath to clarify her mind. “Anyhow, it might not work out with Stuart. He’s like a lot of artists—very unpredictable, if you know what I mean. Kind of dangerous.”

“Mmm…” Donna said. “Dangerous…”

And when Patty finished talking (talking and talking) Donna said, “Well, we might as well all have dinner one night when you’re not working. At least we’d—at least we’d get a chance to, you know…meet.”

“Patty,” Stuart said. “Why do I have to do this?”

“You just have to, Stuart, you have to.” Oh, God, Patty thought. If she weren’t careful, Stuart’s suspicious nature might lead him to the conclusion that she was trying to market them both. “Donna’s asked me to do this, and I can’t go alone, because she’s just…finding her way around with this guy, who also happens to be her employer, and who, I understand, is a very serious and profound person, incidentally, so she wants to be with some people who are…pleasant. And…pleasant to be with. And, by the way,” Patty said, to change the subject, “you’re not planning to wear that shirt, are you?”

“What’s the matter with my shirt?” he said. “I thought nerds were considered fashionable these days.”

“Not actual nerds, Stuart. Just people who look like nerds.”

“Patty,” he said. “I really don’t want to do this.”

“Forget about the shirt, Stuart. However you’re comfortable. I just don’t want to walk in looking pathetic and desperate.”

“Desperate about what?” Stuart asked shrewdly.

To pacify him, Patty agreed to forgo a taxi. They picked their way uncompanionably in the steaming evening through a cluster of shapeless creatures who sat at the subway entrance, surrounded by bags that appeared to be stuffed with filthy, discarded gifts, muttering to themselves in garbled fragments of some lost language. Mrs. Jorgenson would undoubtedly be joining them—assuming Patty could protect herself and Stuart—when the Nice Guys got their duplex. Well, Patty thought, good riddance.

Patty grew increasingly ill-tempered as she and Stuart sweltered underground, waiting for the shrieking train. And by the time they reached the restaurant her mascara was creeping downward and she was cross through and through. So this is it, she thought, looking around at the mirrors and linen, at the graceful sprays of freesia. So this was where everyone had been while she’d been eating Stuart’s barley-and-zucchini casseroles.

Donna was already at a table with Fletcher—a man, as it turned out, of unparalleled presentability. “Hel
lo
,” Patty said.

“Well, well,” said Donna, across whose face was written “I thought you said this guy was an
artist.
” But Donna was not one to let the failings of others cloud her mood, Patty knew, and by the time drinks had been brought she was mollified.

Donna had buffed herself up to a high gloss in the months since Patty had seen her (nothing wrong with
her
mascara), and she was talking with Fletcher of matters entirely foreign to Patty. But strangely, Patty realized, Stuart could manage this conversational obstacle course strewn with technical matters peculiar to periodicals and the private lives of various people involved with them; Stuart knew how to join in.

Obviously, however, Stuart participated entirely without pleasure. It was for her sake, Patty thought, because of her injunctions, and therefore the situation was—Heavens! The situation was dangerous!

Just as Stuart began to fidget noticeably, a new waiter appeared, to deal out menus.

“Oh—” said Fletcher, evidently startled to have been faced with someone as handsome as himself. “The pasta’s excellent, incidentally, but I’d avoid the fish.”

Patty looked at him bleakly. Why were they all here? This wasn’t an interview; it wasn’t—it wasn’t—She couldn’t even think of what it was that this wasn’t. She looked at the prices on the menu, and she looked at Donna and at Stuart and back at Fletcher.
Fletcher
didn’t care what this was or wasn’t; he was just having dinner!

Nerves had dismantled Patty’s appetite, and the menu seemed to be written in Esperanto, so when the waiter returned Patty simply tagged along with Donna and Fletcher. “Fine,” she said. “I’ll also have the salade panachée and then the perciatelli all’amatriciana.”

The waiter turned and stared at Stuart. “O.K.,” Stuart said hopelessly. “What the hell.”

“
Certainly,
” said the waiter with deferential contempt.

“Who does that kid think he is?” Donna said as the waiter left. “He’s a
waiter.
”

Fletcher continued the line of thought he’d been pursuing with Donna as the waiter returned with their salads. “So my point is that Jay Resnick is doing a feature series on Saffi Sheinheld for
Dallas by Daylight.
And Saffi happens to be the senior vice-president of SunBelt,
Dallas
’s biggest account. Now, I would consider that ethically questionable.”

Ethically questionable
—That
fool
, Patty thought. There’d be no holding Stuart now. “Hey, Stuart”—she foraged wildly in her salad—“this purple thing is a
pepper.
”

For a while Patty struggled to match the fun bits of her salad with his, and although Stuart suffered quietly, he looked like a rag doll that had been thrown over a cliff, and soon Patty felt that she, too, was teetering on the brink.

“Donna tells me you’re in graphics,” Fletcher said, flinging Patty a rope.

“Terrific field.” Patty swung to safety. “So incredible, for example, how design, or even layout, can send these tiny, subtle signals. ‘Buy me,’ for example, or—”

“Visual appeal,” Fletcher agreed, glancing up as the waiter arrived with their pasta. “Crucial.” The waiter smirked.

“Is that
bacon
?” Stuart demanded, pointing at his plate.

“It’s
only
a little pan
cet
ta,” the waiter said.

“I understand you’re into film,” Fletcher said obliviously to Stuart.

“‘Into’?” Stuart said. “‘Film’?”

“Look,” Patty said, plunging into her salad and unearthing a greenish disk rimmed with hair. “I bet no one else has one of these!”

“Or have I misunderstood?” Fletcher said to Stuart as if Patty hadn’t spoken.

“Kind of,” Stuart said with an equability that made Patty’s heart plunge. “What I really ‘am,’ see, is mentally ill.”

“Yes?” Fletcher was guarded but ready to be amused.

“Yeah,” Stuart said. “Mental illness. An exacting mistress. It doesn’t leave me a lot of time for other things to be…‘into.’ Like racquetball. Or parenting. Or leveraged buyouts.”

Patty looked down at the table, struggling against an untimely smile, and then looked meekly back up at Fletcher. But Fletcher had been enveloped, during the silence, by a glacier. His disapproval gleamed faintly out from behind centuries of ice, which Donna’s voice splintered like a hatchet. “I don’t think that’s very funny,” Donna said. “A lot of people actually
are
mentally ill, you know.”

“Patty—” Stuart yelped.

“All
right
, Stuart,” Patty said, getting to her feet. “Stuart, you didn’t eat any of that pancetta, did you? Stuart has a…a sensitivity to various additives used in pork products.” She was sick of this; she didn’t care how ridiculous she sounded; these people had never intended to help them. “And you can just never tell when it might—Listen, Stuart, we’d better get you home before you—Here, this should cover our share.” Stuart in tow, she made her way clumsily to the door.

On the way back to Marcia’s in a taxi, Stuart was oddly tranquil. And it was he who, after minutes of silence, spoke first. “I’m sorry if I put a crimp in whatever the hell you were trying to accomplish,” he said quietly.

Contradictory responses raced through Patty’s brain for expression, and clogged. “Give me a break, Stuart,” she managed to say.

“I understand,” Stuart said. “Your better judgment’s been under a lot of pressure.”

“Stuart—” Patty was gratified to find that indignation was the attitude forceful enough to distinguish itself from the mute tangle choking her. “Please don’t talk to me as if I were a criminal. Don’t talk to me as if I were a psychopath. I know the difference between right and wrong. It was wrong of me not to be more forthcoming with you. It was wrong of me to wreck a good opportunity through carelessness. It was wrong of me to waste all that money. I know that what I did was wrong, and I’m trying to apologize.” But Stuart just hunched over and looked out the window, where the lights were streaming by. “Stuart—”

“Take it easy, Patty,” he said. “I’m not angry.”

“Then don’t act like this,” she said. “Just criticize me, please. Give me a lecture.”

But Stuart only patted her hand as if she were an overtired child, and it was when they got back inside the apartment that he himself took his things from the closet and packed them up. “Where will you go?” Patty said. “You don’t have anyplace to go.” And when Stuart took her hand and held it for a moment against his closed eyes, she might have been touching a fallen leaf or petal, or the wing of a chloroformed butterfly.

After Stuart closed the door behind him it was very quiet. And then it kept on being very quiet. Patty had to force herself to stand up and go to the door.

Outside, the evening trembled with threats of a summer storm, and the air was alive with residues of color. In the growing dark the sky was beginning to twinkle with a thousand little windows.

Mr. Martinez smiled up at Patty from the stoop, where he sat watching a bunch of spindly, raucous, big-eyed children as they danced in some sort of circle game, playing with a violent urgency, competing against the approaching storm for what was left of the evening. “Hello, miss!” Mr. Martinez said.

Patty smiled at him absently. How beautiful that restaurant tonight had been! And now, of all things, she was hungry. If Stuart hadn’t left, they could at least have gone someplace for a cheap bite. Well, it hadn’t been
her
fault that he’d left—it hadn’t been her
fault.

As Patty stood, lost in thought, she saw George walk by. “George!” she cried, clattering down the steps. “George!” She tapped him on the shoulder, but the creature that turned around was not George—oh, surely not George—but some awful ghoul with sunken cheeks and stained, broken teeth and eyes that burned as she shrank back. “Sorry,” she breathed. “A mistake.”

“Mistake!” he shrieked. “Sorry! Always sorry, sorry, sorry. Well, I do life, and I do death. Pass this block, blah-blah, blah-blah. Pass this block, we never see
you
again.” A flash of lightning illuminated the awful creature as a contraption of bones in retreating white silhouette, and her own eye sockets flashed white, too, around her, before she blinked and looked back over her shoulder.

In an island of street light Mr. Martinez still sat blissfully watching the ring of dancing children. Everything was just as it had been a moment before: the little scene, the street, the building where Patty had lived for a year; everything was just the same, of course, yet it all looked slightly uncanny—looming and mutable—as if it were something she’d known only from photographs.

“Mr. Martinez,” she tried to call, though Mr. Martinez himself seemed newly a stranger, and her voice, hoarse and ghostly, hardly carried back to her own ears. The smallest of the dancing children spun, and leapt into the center of the circle. Street light glanced off the child’s tiny gold earring, and Mr. Martinez, with narrowed eyes, rocked back in delight, flinging his arms wide in a tap dancer’s gesture of embrace. But for what? Just what was the guy so pleased about, anyway, Patty thought irately, but his arms stretched wider and wider, and he smiled as if he were smiling at the sun.

Two pallid eggs, possibly the final effort of some local chicken, quivered on the plate as the waitress set it in front of Caitlin. The waitress raised her canted black eyes, and behind her Caitlin saw Holly entering at the far end of the room, flanked by two men. Holly’s hair was blond now, a terrible kitchenette color, but her face was Todd’s exactly, or what Todd’s had been at that age. Incredible: Caitlin and Todd had been as young as Holly was now; Holly was now so old—as old as Caitlin and Todd had been! And in the moment before Holly and the men reached her table Caitlin had all too much time to contemplate this stunt, a stunt that had taken twenty years to prepare.

Perhaps she’d been rash to make this trip; certainly she’d had something in mind other than this dingy place and Holly and her friends trooping in like judges. A restful gathering on the beach, something of
that
sort—coconuts filled with rum. A respite from New York, where life had begun to feel chaotic and shapeless, during which she could reconnoiter with all that now seemed to be left of her past—Holly.

For some time, things in New York had been going along just well enough to ignore. Then recently Neil had begun to complain—to formulate an exhaustive catalogue of complaints, each item of which Caitlin considered no more than a shabby justification for seeing other women. Which he was more than welcome to do, as it happened, although, in point of sheer fact, there was also the rent to be considered.

Caitlin temporized, spending more and more time at the bar where she worked, waiting for life with Neil to take an upward turn, or for something else to come along, but in the silence that followed Neil’s noisy departure Caitlin’s surroundings became audible—the daily din of the customers reliving, as she poured their drinks, the talismanic episodes of their pasts; the ghoulish whispering of her own future. And when she understood that there was no one waiting to replace Neil—no one at all—her life roared in her ear like an empty shell.

The problem was, she thought, she’d let herself lapse; she had not been on a stage for some time after Holly was born. When she took up work again she’d had a brief spate of good luck but then job offers became more and more infrequent. She grew out of the roles to which she’d been suited; she grew into no others. And the truth was, she realized, astonished, she hadn’t performed for years now—it was probably years since she’d even auditioned.

In the course of one week she forced herself to attend two open casting calls where scores of people had waited in a large room, some of them women her own age, who were quite clearly too old for the part for which they, and she, were trying out. These women had dressed carefully, as she herself had, to appear nonchalant and young, and, sitting there, had looked at her with something like hatred. At the second audition the script rattled in Caitlin’s hands, and the director, a boy in a fashionably floppy suit, stopped her after she’d read no more than half a page. Later someone told her that the calls were a union requirement—that both shows, in fact, had been cast before the calls took place.

When she returned to the apartment after the second audition she examined herself in the mirror. Her gray-blue eyes were still clear and wide, her pale-brown hair still gave off light. From a distance she could have been a girl, but tonight her face was disfigured by the meaningless history of a stranger. Surely her intended self was locked away somewhere, embryonic and protected. She searched the mirror, but the impostor on duty there stared bafflingly back.

She had a drink, and then another, straining through the tumult of her panic to understand what she was to do, and then it came to her that she must see Holly.

“What’s the matter, Mama?” Holly said guardedly when Caitlin reached her on the phone.

“I’m glad to talk to you, too,” Caitlin said, thrown as always upon hearing Holly’s light, high, rapid voice, her slight Southern accent.

“It’s after midnight,” Holly said.

“It took me long enough to find you, you know,” Caitlin said, although, strictly speaking, she happened to have Holly’s new number, which Todd’s sister Martha had included in one of her infrequent but vigorous letters of ill-concealed denunciation. “You didn’t even tell me you’d moved.”

“Did someone just dump you, Mama?” Holly said. “Is that it?”

Caitlin shrank inward. When Holly was a child she’d arrive every summer, a distrustful little stranger from Todd’s world, with Todd’s accent. More recently she and Caitlin had spent several weeks a year together. Not enough time, of course. But still, had it been Caitlin’s fault? “You’ve got my number,” she said. “Call when you have time.”

“No, wait, Mama, don’t,” Holly said. “Don’t. I’m sorry.”

Holly was taking a break from school, she said; she’d been planning to let Caitlin know. She’d moved in with her boyfriend, who was in business. He traveled a lot, south, to other countries. Daddy liked him—he was alert. He spoke some Spanish. Sometimes she went with him on his trips. She was fine, she said; happy.

“Are you happy?” Caitlin said. “You sound tense.”

“I’m happy, Mama,” Holly said. “I told you.”

Caitlin let a moment elapse.

“Sorry,” Holly said.

“Listen,” Caitlin said. “How about this? Come visit—why not? We’ll have a great time. We’ll go around New York like tourists. And then you’ll tell me all about your friend. I’ve been auditioning like a madwoman, and I need to relax, too.”

“I don’t need to relax,” Holly said. “I’m relaxed. Besides, Mama—Listen, I’m sorry. But this is just not a good time—Brandon and I are going on a trip.”

But she’d been
counting
on seeing Holly…“Well, then,” she said. She held the phone in dazed confusion for a minute or so, trying to think of a way to disengage herself from the conversation before she cried, or said something she would regret. But then she heard herself asking, to her own surprise, “How’s Todd?”

“Daddy?” Holly said. “Oh, Daddy’s O.K. Business has been bad, though, lately,” she added. “He seems sort of worn out.”

Todd’s busty secretaries, his little pocket Christmas calendars, his showroom of clownish plumbing fixtures—could Caitlin have despised them so much if they were not indestructible? How terrible if they should turn out not to be. “I’m sure Linda’s taking good care of him, though,” she said.

“Yes…” Holly admitted uncertainly.

“Everyone gets older,” Caitlin said. “You wouldn’t believe it if you saw me.”

“Mama—” Holly said. “Are you O.K., Mama?”

“Fine,” Caitlin said. “Anyhow.”

“Wait, Mama—” Holly said. “Please.”

Caitlin waited while Holly readjusted the phone.

“Listen,” Holly said. “Well, anyhow. So Brandon and I have to take this little trip now. Anyhow, otherwise—” Holly stopped. “I mean it would be really nice to see you. But I mean, we’re not going to have any time on this trip. This is a business trip.”

“Well, if that’s the only problem,” Caitlin said. “I’m a terrific traveler.” Before Holly was born she’d spent quite a bit of time on the road, back and forth between California and New York. “No one has to take care of me—I love to go off on my own and explore.”

After a minute Holly sighed. Then she spoke. “All right, Mama,” she said. “O.K.”

Within three days Caitlin had made all her New York arrangements, bought a plane ticket to the town whose name Holly had spelled out for her, and acquired, under Holly’s instructions, a visa. But when she changed planes in Miami early one morning, she wondered if there was something she’d failed to take into account. “What does your friend do in that place?” Caitlin had asked Holly on the phone. “It’s
business
, Mama,” Holly had said. “Anyhow, what do you care? It’ll be a vacation. It’ll be warm.” And Caitlin packed a suitcase full of festive, warm-weather clothing, new and borrowed. But the few other women waiting at the gate were prim and sour; aside from them, and some miserable-looking boys whose heads were practically shaved, and several thick-set athletic types incongruously bad-tempered in their colorful, open Hawaiian shirts and cutoffs, the passengers were pale men with briefcases, who sat forward in their chairs, looking neither to the right nor to the left.

The silence at the gate grew more and more concentrated until a few minutes before the plane was to be boarded, when a portly woman in Bermuda shorts strode in. A little blue sailor cap bobbed on top of her iron-gray hair, and she gripped a small boy by the arm. “Guess what he’s got in there!” the woman said. She released the child’s arm to thump the knapsack he was wearing. “He’s got a Big Mac! Every time we come up, we stop at McDonald’s last thing, so he can bring a burger or two down to his brother.” The boy rubbed his arm and blinked resentfully. His face was small and peeled-looking, and there were bluish shadows beneath his eyes. “I hope you got yourself one,” the woman said to Caitlin. “Because you’re not going to be having one for a while, I guess, are you?”

Caitlin offered the minimum smile and extracted a fashion magazine from her bag.

“Who are
you
with?” the woman said, settling heavily into one of the tiny seats near Caitlin.

“Excuse me?” Caitlin said.

“Excuse
me
, excuse
me
,” the woman said, raising her hands as if to ward Caitlin off. “Well, I don’t mind talking about my people then. Because we stick strictly to religious instruction. Of course, we’re required to distribute a certain amount of aid as well, but out there in the countryside religious instruction is the thing that really counts, isn’t it?”

“Really,” Caitlin said, casting a glance at her magazine.

“You bet your boots it is,” the woman said. “Arms them against temptation. Of course”—she chuckled—“I suppose arms arm them, too. But seriously, you’ve got to reach them first, don’t you? Their hearts are good, you can take that from me—they’re honest, and they’re hardworking, despite what you hear. But they’re gullible, you see; they’re still Indians, when you get right down to it. And the Cubans and the Catholics come sidling along, telling them that God loves the poor. And we know where
that
leads, don’t we? So we do what we can with shoes and rice—these people don’t eat potatoes, you know. And leadership’s planning a home for the widows and orphans, so they see that we intend the best for them. Not that there aren’t risks.” She raised a stern eyebrow and looked piercingly at Caitlin. “I hope you don’t mind my asking,” she said, “but is this your first time down?”

Caitlin looked up from her magazine, but the woman’s features were like a pile of root vegetables screening her expression. “It is, actually,” Caitlin said.

“Well,” the woman said, relaxing her scrutiny, “you’re all right in the city, aren’t you? Fewer mosquitoes. You can get quite a decent hunk of meat, too, you know. And there are several clean English-language cinemas—I mean, if you can stand the blood.”

On the plane Caitlin watched with relief as the woman in the sailor cap proceeded past her up the aisle, pulling the boy, from whose knapsack trailed a suggestion of grease. “Chin up!” the woman called, and the man in the next seat glanced at Caitlin.

“Completely insane,” Caitlin explained, to put the man at his ease.

“Yes?” he said. He seemed doubtful.

“I couldn’t believe my ears,” Caitlin said. “Hamburgers. Indians. Subversives…”

“Tend to be a problem, I suppose,” the man said. “They say not, of course, but one expects them to put a good face on it. Still, one never knows—in Guatemala things really are under control.” He raised his eyebrows and nodded at Caitlin. “To tell you the truth, though,” he confided anxiously, “this is my first time down here.”

“Footloose little crowd,” Caitlin said. “Aren’t we?”

“Ha-ha,” the man agreed. “You see, we’ve been doing quite a decent business in Guatemala and Salvador the last few years, and the office thought, Well, why not give it a whirl? All these places are so darn hungry for trade—terms are favorable, and there aren’t so many silly restrictions as in some places I could mention.”

Caitlin glanced across the aisle, but the situation there didn’t look much more promising—there were only the ill-tempered men in cutoffs, who were already drinking from cans of beer they must have carried on with them.

“And things being what they are at the moment,” the man continued, “there’s a lot of disposable income clanking around down there, believe it or not. Not per-capita speaking, of course—per-capita speaking, still just about the poorest damn place in the hemi sphere. Well, I mean except for Haiti.”

Haiti—Caitlin had been in a play once, with wonderful costumes, about voodoo. “I always think Haiti’s so fascinating,” she said.

“Really?” The man looked somewhat alarmed. “Incidentally, what is it that brings you here?”

“My daughter.” Caitlin smiled at him. “Isn’t that amazing?”

“I’ll say,” the man said.

“Well, I was practically a child bride, of course,” Caitlin said.

“Yes?” the man said. He appeared to be puzzled. “And is she at the Embassy, your daughter?”

“Embassy?” Caitlin looked at him. “What on earth for?”

“Oh, sorry,” he said. “I just—no, I guess not.” He glanced at her, inventorying her in a category she couldn’t identify, and then receded into a private melancholy. Caitlin returned in irritation to her magazine, and the man bent over his open briefcase, shadowy preoccupations playing across the pale screen of his face. But when the stewardess came around he grew morosely cordial again. “Can I get you a drink?” he said.

“Thanks,” Caitlin said. “Just a vodka tonic, please.”

“Bourbon for me, dear,” the man said to the stewardess. “Terrif.”

“That’s better,” he said, turning to Caitlin a few minutes later. “You know, if you and your daughter would care to stop by for a drink, I’m at the—well, here.” He took a business card from his wallet. “I’ll write down the name of my hotel.”

“Thank you,” Caitlin said. Underneath the scrawled name of the hotel was printed “TechNil, Cleaning Products for the Home, Harvey Gumbiner, Vice-President in Charge of Distribution.”