The Collected Stories of Deborah Eisenberg (30 page)

“And if the two of you are planning to be down here through the summer,” Harvey said, “they’ll probably be having their party at the Embassy on the Fourth. They do in most places, anyhow. Wonderful custom, in my opinion—usually the event of the year. Any U.S. citizen, of whatever stripe or persuasion, is welcome to attend. People come from every sector of the business community. Hot dogs, hamburgers—just like your own backyard. Corn flown in fresh…”

Caitlin adjusted her seat backward. No, it had been a good idea, this trip; there would be new people, parties, interesting men…

“But don’t misunderstand me,” Harvey said hurriedly. “You do hear of the occasional embarrassment in these sensitive areas. Episodes, poor taste, so on. Seems odd, but that’s human psychology, isn’t it?” He frowned at his empty plastic cup. “
Our
money,
our
protection, but people seem to feel funny about that sort of thing. More blessed to give than to receive, I suppose. Well, another drink?”

“I shouldn’t,” Caitlin said, looking around for the stewardess.

The airport was a stark little affair outside of which a sad mob waited under the bloated sky. Inside, in the lines where papers were to be checked and stamped, luggage was to be inspected, and unconvincingly ornate money was to be issued, Caitlin’s fellow passengers once again looked away from one another, tense and silent. Harvey disappeared quickly into the maw of the baggage-claim area, the disheveled beer drinkers were nowhere to be seen, and even the woman in the sailor cap seemed to have been seized with a seriousness of purpose. She went through her tasks quickly, with a cold efficiency, and when she passed by, her mouth set, neither she nor the boy with her seemed to recognize Caitlin. An official of some sort appeared, to speak to the cluster of furtive-looking boys from the plane, who were now standing right behind Caitlin. Their pale scalps glimmered like mushrooms through their short hair, and a damp fear came off them as they responded to the official’s question, nodding soberly, their faces a shifting balance of expressions—resignation, eagerness, rage, and obedience—that canceled each other into an unstable blankness.

A mournful taxi-driver brought Caitlin, without commentary or questions, to the hotel where Holly had directed her. There Caitlin registered with a woman whose listlessness was almost overpowering. At least the woman spoke English, Caitlin thought—in fact, it seemed that almost everyone did.

Caitlin’s room was an undeceiving simulation of luxury. Streaks of disinfectant testified to its cleanliness, and the faint stench of synthetics recalled best-forgotten mornings in motels. Caitlin followed a thunderous choking into the bathroom, where the toilet was paralyzed in a permanent flush. She washed her face with the fibrous soap that had been provided and inspected the other complimentary toiletries—tiny plastic packets, bonded shut, of shampoo and bath foam in violent, improbable colors.

She sat on the bed and looked out the window. The hills around the town were covered with vegetation, fecund but dying; the town appeared to be constructed of pale, decomposing, organic concrete. There were fingerprints on the bleary clouds. No sense unpacking—she’d move to a happier hotel later. She left her suitcase in the closet and went downstairs to the restaurant, where she was to meet Holly.

The restaurant was the color of dying vegetation. Most of the customers and all of the waitresses had heavy black hair and black, slightly slanting eyes that made their ordinary suits and dresses look to Caitlin like disguises. She ordered breakfast. Where was Holly?

It was twenty years ago that Caitlin had found herself pregnant. She’d been on tour, in a small revue that had become unexpectedly popular, and she’d met Todd in the bar of the hotel where she was staying with the other members of her company. His childish respectability, his crafty innocence were comical, but he was very good-looking, and Caitlin was slightly drunk, and the whole thing was irresistibly ridiculous, not only to her but also to the boys from her cast, who were with her in the bar, waiting. In the morning, Caitlin let herself be persuaded to spend the night with Todd again, and by the end of the week he took her breath away.

She swung back and forth across the gulf between her attraction to him and the stunning tedium of his conversation. At first the sensation was like a toy. The boys in the company came down with a group fever; Todd was, they agreed, delicious. The boys made up stories—uproarious, hyperbolic romances—in which Todd starred opposite Caitlin, the surrogate. All the boys, and Caitlin, too, would be weak with laughter by the time Todd appeared after the show to take her home, and then the boys would become pouty and sultry, throwing Todd into good-natured confusion. It didn’t matter, Caitlin thought; the show would be moving soon.

But then she was pregnant. She would wake up in the morning and the fact would be waiting to claim her. During the day she would be blanketed by a dullness that was impossible to fight off—she couldn’t grasp anything for more than a moment.

Of course, she could get rid of the baby—not much problem there—but then what was it she’d been planning for the whole rest of her life? The truth was, she thought alone in her hotel room, she couldn’t count on having this sort of job forever. And each time she brought herself to consider her course of action, what presented itself in place of an answer was a question once again.

For whole minutes the world would be suspended, and she would feel emptily cheerful, even happy; then she would remember what was happening inside her and a heavy fear would press her down. Days and days passed in this way, and then one day, among the shreds of feelings that rose and fell around her on harsh little gusts, a sort of hope appeared. Gradually, it grew in substance and weight, and one night she had a dream.

She dreamed that she was lying in her bed, exhausted and despairing, but then she noticed a wonderful piece of furniture against the wall, all covered with rosettes and cherubs. She got up from bed and opened it, and there, sparkling in the darkness, was the solution to her problems.

It was a ridiculous dream, but when she woke up it struck her with the force of an actual possibility that the means for her happiness was right inside her. When she told Todd she was pregnant, his face registered a self-satisfaction that made her sick with rage, and then immediately he began to plan.

For some time after they were married, Todd would plead with Caitlin to tell him what he’d done, but eventually he stopped, since it was clear that he’d done nothing. Later, he would beg Caitlin to stay, in a mounting voice and a mawkish, lofty, and fraudulent tone that drove her into venomous frenzies of threats. During several of these outbursts Holly had been in the room; she’d pushed at Caitlin’s knees and shrieked as though Caitlin really were going to leave that very second. “Don’t! Don’t!” Holly would cry. “Mama, don’t
leeaave
—” and then, for days afterward, the three of them would be shaken and fearful, shadowed by the horror of things that had almost been done.

When Holly was three and a half, Caitlin really did leave. Todd was courteous and formal—he had become a great deal more self-possessed since his days at the hotel bar—but his efficiency in the matter of Holly revealed a long-entrenched and fully assimilated hatred, of which Caitlin had been entirely unaware. He had little trouble insuring that Caitlin’s access to Holly was legally limited; evidently he had been ready for some time.

Now, as the waitress moved away, Holly appeared—different in immeasurable tiny details from the person who existed in the custody of Caitlin’s imagination—and gestured to one of the two men with her. “Mama, this is Brandon,” she said in her rapid little uninflected voice. “My fiancé.”

Although he looked hardly older than Holly, Brandon had a finished, knife-edged glint. His eyes were shockingly blue and expressionless, and his hair was a lucent, pure flax color, to which Holly had attempted, apparently, to match her own.
Fiancé?
Later, when they could really talk, she must tell Holly not to do this.

The other man, Lewis, must have been practically twice Holly’s age. He was large and a bit soft-looking. His curly hair was greasy, and coarsened from the sun; a pitted nose stuck out between his mustache and his aviator sunglasses. He wore jeans, and a short-sleeved shirt under which Caitlin could see a faded, rose-colored T-shirt clinging sensually to his broad torso.

They sat down with Caitlin, and Lewis ordered breakfast for himself, Holly, and Brandon in Spanish. Holly’s natural expression, Caitlin noticed, was still stubborn and slightly worried—even as a toddler she had been literal-minded and deliberate. But she had lost some of Todd’s starchy look, and the tank top and shorts she was wearing suited her better than the ruffled things she’d favored as a child.

Brandon stretched out his long legs and looked appraisingly at Caitlin. But Holly blinked rapidly, then glared at her plate and rubbed at a splotch on it with her thumb.

“Well,” Caitlin said.

“Glad you could take the time to come down here and join us all, ma’am,” Brandon said to her quietly. He turned the blue beacon of his stare on Holly. “Aren’t we, sweetheart?” he said, and she looked up at him, her mouth open.

Brandon looked oddly clean, as though he’d just showered off some identifying characteristics, and his brilliant, empty eyes could have belonged to an animal—some creature attuned only to the most minute signals of scent and sound. His accent was identical with Holly’s, but his speech was alarmingly controlled. Fiancé! Well, of course it was all back in fashion now—table settings, shame, property agreements—but it seemed such a short time ago that no one had gotten married. No one, of course, except Todd.

Holly cleared her throat. “So, what about those auditions you’ve been doing, Mama? You find anything good?”

Caitlin pushed her hair back. “Nothing,” she said. “Everything around is shit.”

“An entertainer, huh?” Lewis said, poking his fork toward Caitlin. “You know, I admire entertainers. I always had a bit of a secret letch to be an entertainer myself. I played the drums when I was a kid, drove the whole neighborhood nuts. Then when I got back from Vietnam my buddies and I had a band. Gross National Product—” Caitlin could see him look at her behind his aviator glasses. “Maybe you remember it?”

“Not really,” she said politely.

“‘Not really,’” he mimicked. “Surprise, surprise—no one fucking remembers. What do you want? We played exclusively scummy neighborhoods.”

Holly and Brandon attended to their food with fastidious absorption, but there was a disturbance occurring in another part of the room. “
Buenas,
” someone was declaring loudly. Caitlin turned around to see a young man going from table to table, greeting the customers.

“
Buenas,
” he announced, stopping at their table. “How are you fine people today?” His accent was so slight as to seem just a crisping around the edges of words. “I’m Ricky.” He extended to Caitlin a hand in a little black backless glove that snapped at the wrist. “Just down from Miami?”

“Miami?” she said. His clothing looked like a scout uniform from a pornographic movie; his bare, heavily muscled thigh was level with her face.

“I like Miami,” he said. His hands settled lightly, one on Holly’s shoulder, one on Brandon’s. “People there are friendly, not like here.
This
place—bunch of crazy refugees trying to stab you in the ass all the time.” He kneaded Holly’s shoulder absently under the strap of her tank top. “You got a plane?” he said to Brandon. “Maybe I’ll go up with you this weekend.”

Holly had turned a bit pink, but Brandon was looking thoughtfully into the distance.

In the silence, Ricky seemed to notice his hand on Holly’s shoulder. He lifted it and waved. “O.K., good people—see you at the club.”

Brandon resumed eating and Holly continued to poke at her eggs as Caitlin looked from one to the other. “Friend of yours?” she said.

Brandon’s look of extreme neutrality intensified. Neither he nor Holly looked up. “Because if you ask me,” Caitlin said, “there’s such a thing as just too stoned.”

“Oh, we all know each other down here,” Lewis said. “Not like Guatemala. Here, everything’s under control. A place for everyone, everyone in his place. Small operation, enough pie to go around; smoothly functioning system of checks and balances.”

“Remember when we used to play that game, Mama?” Holly said suddenly. She turned to look at Caitlin. “Remember that? We played ‘We’re in Holly’s room, in our house, in Durham, in North Carolina, in the United States of America, in the Western Hemi sphere, on the planet Earth, in the solar system, in the universe…’”

Holly’s room, with its new furniture and the glut of horrible bears from Todd’s family. How could Holly remember that? She wouldn’t even have been four. She had played soberly with her bears and teacups while Caitlin, in a reverie of scene-study classes and rehearsals, had brushed the light, sweet hair back from her face and the two of them had pursued, in the stale, fruity afternoon sunlight, the protean task of being mother and daughter. “I remember,” Caitlin said.

“Well,” Holly said. “Now we’re in the restaurant, in our hotel, in Tegucigalpa, in Honduras, in whatever it is, in the Western Hemi sphere, on the planet Earth, in the solar system, in the universe…”

“‘Honduras’…” But where were the white sand and palm trees, vacationers spotting one another amid crowds of perspiring natives and trading private, approving glances? Well, of course, Caitlin knew, there were all kinds of other things going on now in this part of the world. “Just what exactly is this stuff we keep hearing about down here now?” she said, trying to construct something solid from fragments she’d heard on television.

“You might be thinking of the war, ma’am,” Brandon said.

“Yes…” Caitlin tried to remember. “Well, there’s a war here, of course.”