The Collected Stories of Deborah Eisenberg (6 page)

“Great,” Chris said. “That’s really sweet.” But his voice sounded muted, and I wasn’t at all surprised when I got to Jake’s and he wasn’t there. I was on my third Coke when Chris walked in, but a girl wearing lots of bracelets waylaid him at the bar, and he sat down with her.

I didn’t dare finish my Coke or ask for my check. All I could do was stay put and do whatever Chris made me do. Finally the girl at the bar left, giving Chris a big, meaty kiss, and he wandered over and sat down with me.

“God. Did you see that girl who was sitting with me?” he said. “That girl is so crazy. There’s nothing she won’t put in her mouth. I was at some party a few weeks ago, and I walk in through this door, ’cause I’m looking for the john, and there’s Beverly, lying on the floor stark naked. So you know what she does?”

“No,” I said.

“She says, ‘Excuse me,’ and instead of putting something on she reaches up and turns out the light. Now, that’s thinkin’, huh?” He laughed. “Have you finished all those things you had to do?” he asked me.

“Yes,” I said.

“That’s great,” Chris said. “I’m really running around like a chicken today. Honey,” he said to a waitress, “put that on my tab, will you?” He pointed at my watery Coke.

“Sandra was looking for you,” the waitress said. “Did she find you?”

“Yeah, thanks,” Chris said. He gave me a kiss on the cheek, which was the first time he had kissed me at all, except at Joel’s, and he left.

I knew I had made some kind of mistake, but I couldn’t figure out what it was. I would only be able to figure it out from Chris, but it would be two weeks until I saw him again. Every night, I looked out the window at the red glow of the city beyond all the quiet little houses and yards, and every night after I got into bed I felt it draw nearer and nearer, hovering just beyond my closed eyes, with Chris inside it. While I slept, it receded again; but by morning, when I woke up and put on my school clothes, I had come one day closer.

After my next appointment with Dr. Wald, Chris wasn’t at Jake’s. For the first time since I had gone to Jake’s, Chris didn’t come at all.

On the way home it was all I could do not to cry in front of Mother and Penelope. And I wondered what I was going to do from that afternoon on.

“And how was Dr. Wald today?” my father said when we sat down for dinner.

“I didn’t ask,” I said.

My father paused to acknowledge my little joke.

“What I meant,” he said, “was how is my lovely daughter?”

I knew he was trying to say something nice, but he could have picked something sincere for once. I hated the way he had taken off his jacket and opened up his collar and rolled up his sleeves, and I thought I would be sick if he stood behind my chair later. “Penelope is your lovely daughter,” I said, and threw my silverware onto the table.

From upstairs I listened. I knew that Penelope would have frozen, the way she does when someone says in front of me how pretty she is, but no one said anything about me that I could hear.

Later, Penelope and Paul and I made up a story together, the way we had when we were younger. Paul fell asleep suddenly in the middle with little tears in the corners of his eyes, and I tucked Penelope into bed. When I smoothed out the covers, a shadow of relief crossed her face.

That Saturday, Mother took me shopping in the city without Penelope or Paul. “I thought we should get you a present,” Mother said. “Something pretty.” She smiled at me in a strange, stiff way.

“Thank you,” I said. I felt good that we were driving together, but I was sad, too, that Mother was trying to bring me into the clean, bright, fancy, daytime part of New York that Penelope’s dancing school was in, because when would she accept that there was no place there for me? I wondered if Mother wanted to say something to me, but we just drove silently, except for once, when Mother pointed out a lady in a big, white, flossy fur coat.

At Bonwit’s, Mother picked out an expensive dress for me. “What do you think?” she said when I tried it on.

I was glad that Mother had chosen it, because it was very pretty, and it was white, and it was expensive, but in the mirror I just looked skinny and dazed. “I like it,” I said. “But don’t you think it looks wrong on me?”

“Well, it seems fine to me, but it’s up to you,” Mother said. “You can have it if you want.”

“But look, Mother,” I said. “Look. Do you think it’s all right?”

“If you don’t like it, don’t get it,” she said. “It’s your present.”

At home after dinner I tried the white dress on again and stared at myself in the mirror, and I thought maybe it looked a little better.

I went down to the living room, where Mother was stretched out on the sofa with her feet on my father’s lap. When I walked in he started to get up, but Mother didn’t move. “My God,” my father said. “It’s Lucia.”

My mother giggled. “Wedding scene or mad scene?” she said.

Upstairs I folded the dress back into the box for Bonwit’s to pick up. At night I watched bright dancing patterns in the dark and I dreaded going back to Dr. Wald.

The doctor didn’t seem to notice anything unusual at my next appointment. I still had to face walking the short distance to Jake’s, though. I practically fell over from relief when I saw Chris at the bar, and he reached out as I went by and reeled me in, smiling. He was talking to Mark and some other friends, and he stood me with my back to him and rubbed my shoulders and temples. I tried to smile hello to Mark, who was staring at me with his pale eyes, but he just kept staring, listening to Chris. I closed my eyes and leaned back against Chris, who folded his arms around me. When Chris finished his story, everyone laughed except me. Chris blew a little stream of air into my hair, ruffling it up. “Want to take a ride?” he said.

We drove for a while, fast, circling the city, and Chris slammed tapes into the tape deck. Then we parked and Chris turned and looked at me.

“What do you want to do?” Chris asked me.

“Now?” I said, but he just looked at me, and I didn’t know what he meant. “Nothing,” I said.

“Have I seemed preoccupied to you lately, honey?” he asked.

“I guess maybe a little,” I said, even though I hadn’t really ever thought about how he seemed. He just seemed like himself. But he told me that yes, he had been preoccupied. He had borrowed some money to start an audio business, but he had to help out a cousin, too. I couldn’t make any sense of what he was talking about, and I didn’t really care, either. I was thinking that now he had finally called me “honey.” It made me so happy, so happy, even though “honey” was what he called everyone, and I had been the only Laurel.

Chris talked and talked, and I watched his mouth as the words came out. “I know you wonder what’s going on with me,” he said. “What it is is I worry that you’re so young. I’m a difficult person. There are a lot of strange things about me. I’m really crazy about you, you know. I’m really crazy about you, but I can’t ask you to see me.”

“Why don’t I come in and stay over with you a week from Friday,” I said. “Can I?”

Chris blinked. “Terrific, honey,” he said cautiously. “That’s a date.”

I arranged it with Maureen that I would say I was staying at her house. “Don’t wear underwear,” Maureen told me. “That really turns guys on.”

Chris and I met at Jake’s, but we didn’t stay there long. We drove all over the city, stopping at different places. Chris knew people everywhere, and we would sit down at the bar and talk to them. We went to an apartment with some of the people we ran into, where everyone lay around listening to tapes. And once we went to a club and watched crowds of people change like waves with the music, under flashing lights.

Chris didn’t touch me, not once, not even accidentally, all during that time.

Sometime between things we stopped for food. I couldn’t eat, but Chris seemed starving. He ate his cheeseburger and French fries, and then he ate mine. And then he had a big piece of pecan pie.

Late, very late, we climbed into the car again, but there was nothing left to do. “Home?” Chris said without turning to me.

Chris’s apartment seemed so strange, and maybe that was just because it was real. But I had surely never been inside such a small, plain place to live before, and Chris hardly seemed to own anything. There were a few books on a shelf, and a little kitchen off in the corner, with a pot on the stove. It was up several flights of dark stairs, in a brick building, and it must have been on the edge of the city, because I could see water out the window, and ribbons of highway elevated on huge concrete pillars, and dark piers.

Chris’s bed, which was tightly made with the sheet turned back over the blanket, looked very narrow. All the music we had been hearing all night was rocketing around in my brain, and I felt jittery and a bit sick. Chris passed a joint to me, and he lay down with his hands over his eyes. I sat down on the edge of the bed next to him and waited, but he didn’t move. “Remember when I asked you a while ago what you wanted to do and you said ‘Nothing’?” Chris asked me.

“But that was—” I started to say, and then the funny sound of Chris’s voice caught up with me, and all the noise in my head shut off.

“I remember,” Chris said. Then a long time went by.

“Why did you come here, Laurel?” Chris said.

When I didn’t answer, he said, “Why? Why did you come here? You’re old enough now to think about what you’re doing.” And I remembered I had never been alone with him before, except in his car.

“Yes,” I said into the dead air. whatever I’d been waiting for all that time had vanished. “It’s all right.”

“It’s all right?” Chris said furiously. “Well, good. It’s all right, then.” He was still lying on his back with his hands over his eyes, and neither of us moved. I thought I might shatter.

Sometime in the night Chris spoke again. “Why are you angry?” he said. His voice was blurred, as if he’d been asleep. I wanted to tell him I wasn’t angry, but it seemed wrong, and I was afraid of what would happen if I did. I put my arms around him and started kissing him. He didn’t move a muscle, but I kept right on. I knew it was my only chance, and I thought that if I stopped I would have to leave. “Don’t be angry,” he said.

Sometime in the night I sprang awake. Chris was holding my wrists behind my back with one hand and unbuttoning my shirt with the other, and his body felt very tense. “Don’t!” I said, before I understood.

“‘Don’t!’” echoed Chris, letting go of me. He said it just the way I had, sounding just as frightened. He fell asleep immediately then, sprawled out, but I couldn’t sleep anymore, and later, when Chris spoke suddenly into the dark, I felt I’d been expecting him to. “Your parents are going to worry,” he said deliberately, as if he were reading.

“No,” I said. I wondered how long he had been awake. “They think I’m at Maureen’s.” And then I realized how foolish it was for me to have said that.

“They’ll worry,” he said. “They will worry. They’ll be very frightened.”

And then I was so frightened myself that the room bulged and there was a sound in my ears like ball bearings rolling around wildly. I put my hands against my hot face, and my skin felt to me as if it belonged to a stranger. It felt like a marvel—brand-new and slightly moist—and I wondered if anyone else would ever touch it and feel what I had felt.

“Look—” Chris said. He sounded blurry again, and helpless and sad. “Look—see how bad I am for you, Laurel? See how I make you cry?” Then he put his arms around me, and we lay there on top of the bed for a long, long time, and sometimes we kissed each other. My shirtsleeve was twisted and it hurt against my arm, but I didn’t move.

When the night red began finally to bleach out of the sky, I touched Chris’s wrist. “I have to go now,” I said. That wasn’t true, of course. My parents would expect me to stay at Maureen’s till at least noon. “I have to be home when it gets light.”

“Do you?” Chris said, but his eyes were closed.

I stood up and buttoned my shirt.

“I’ll take you to the train,” Chris said.

At first he didn’t move, but finally he stood up, too. “I need some coffee,” he said. And when he looked at me my heart sank. He was smiling. He looked as if he wanted to start it up—start it all again.

I went into the bathroom, so I wouldn’t be looking at Chris. There was a tub and a sink and a toilet. Chris uses them, I thought, as if that would explain something to me, but the thought was like a sealed package. Stuck in the corner of the mirror over the sink was a picture of a man’s face torn from a magazine. It was a handsome face, but I didn’t like it.

“That’s a guy I went to high school with,” Chris said from behind me. “He’s a very successful actor now.”

“That’s nice,” I said, and waited as long as I could. “Look—it’s almost light.”

And in the instant that Chris glanced at the window, where in fact the faintest dawn was showing, I stepped over to the door and opened it.

In the car, Chris seemed the way he usually did. “I’m sorry I’m so tired, honey,” he said. “I’ve been having a rough time lately. We’ll get together another time, when I’m not so hassled.”

“Yes,” I said. “Good.” I don’t think he really remembered the things we had said in the dark.

When we stopped at the station, Chris put his arm across me, but instead of opening the door he just held the handle. “You think I’m really weird, don’t you?” he said, and smiled at me.

“I think you’re tired,” I said, making myself smile back. And Chris released the handle and let me out.

I took the train through the dawn and walked from the station, pausing carefully if it looked as though someone was awake inside a house I was passing. Once a dog barked, and I stood absolutely still for minutes.

I threw chunks from the lawn at Maureen’s window, so Carolina wouldn’t wake up, but I was afraid the whole town would be out by the time Maureen heard.

Maureen came down the back way and got me. We each put on one of her bathrobes, and we made a pot of coffee, which is something I’m not allowed to drink.

“What happened?” Maureen asked.

“I don’t know,” I said.