The Collected Stories of Deborah Eisenberg (94 page)

Money to speak of. A different kind of money than the money her mother had counted out for groceries.

So why not look at this period of being broke as an opportunity, he was saying, that might not come again. Because this was, he’d informed her, one’s life.

The waiter poured a little wine into Roger’s glass. How is that, sir? the waiter said.

Fine, Roger said, very good. He beamed as the waiter poured out a full glass for Kristina.

Thanks, Artie, she said, and Artie had bowed.

You know everyone! Roger observed.

Yeah, well, she knew Artie, unfortunately. A tiny chapter her history would have been better off without.

What is it? Roger asked. He’d smiled quizzically and taken her hand. What are you thinking?

She’d looked at him, smiled back, and withdrawn her hand.

Roger’s marriage, for better or worse, had come to its natural end, he was saying. And while he looked for the occasion to make that clear, in a sensitive manner, to his wife, he was scouting out arenas in which to mine his stifled and neglected capacities.

As he talked, he gazed at her raptly, as though she were a mirror. When he reached for his wallet, to show her pictures of his children, she withdrew her hand from his again, and concentrated on drinking the very good wine. By the time they had polished off nearly two bottles and Roger was willing to throw in the towel, The Mill Wheel had almost emptied out, and Artie was lounging at the bar, staring at her evilly.

After that evening, she turned down dinner invitations, and eventually she started wearing a ring. At some point it came to her attention that Roger had indeed moved to town. In fact, he was increasingly to be seen in the afternoons hanging out at one of the bars or another, brainstorming his next move in life with the help of the bartenders.

The brilliant autumn days graded into a dazzling, glassy winter with skies like prisms, and then spring drifted down, as soft as pale linen. She painted her room a deep, mysterious blue.

Where on earth was she going to go if Nonie and Munsen had this baby they kept talking about?

She kept seeing women around her age, or anyway not much older, coming into town in their beat-up cars or pickups, to stock up. They looked sunburned and hardy and ready for the next thing, as if they were climbing out of water after a swim. Big, friendly dogs frisked around them.

Where could they be coming from? From out in the country, of course—way out, from the wild, ramshackle farms, where the weeds shot up and burst into sizzling flowers.

The kitchen is freezing. She goes into the bedroom and selects a worn chenille robe from Alma’s closet. Alma’s clock, with the big, reproving green numbers, says ten thirty.

So, where is Alma? Way back, when they were growing up almost next door to each other in the projects, and their mothers let Alma exercise her fierce affections on the little girl she knew to be her half-sister, Alma took care of her while their mothers worked.

And young as Kristina was, Alma confided in her. Back then, Kristina felt Alma’s suffering over boys like the imprint of a slap on her own skin. Evidently things haven’t changed much for Alma, and it’s saddening now to picture Alma’s history with Gerry: the big guy on the next bar stool, a few annihilating hours of alcohol, a messy, urgent interval at his place or hers, the sequence recapitulated now and again—an uneasy companionability hemmed about with recriminations and contingencies…

In her peripheral vision, Eli appears.

It was busy, and she didn’t get a good look at him right away, but even at the other end of the room, sitting and talking to Frank, he was conspicuous, as if he were surrounded by his own splendid night.

Yes. She’d felt the active density right away, the gravitational pull.

It must have been several weeks later that he was there again with Frank. And when Frank got up to strut, and sniff around for mistakes, Eli looked right at her over Frank’s shoulder and smiled—not the usual sort of stranger’s smile, like a fence marking a divide. Not a stranger’s smile at all.

It was a Friday night; the tourists started to pour in, and when she had a chance to peek back at him he was gone. He didn’t reappear.

Then one night she glanced up from the table where she was taking an order and he was sitting at the bar. A little shock rippled through her. Evidently she’d been waiting.

He was looking for Frank again of course, but, as she explained, it was Frank’s night off. Too bad you didn’t call first, she said.

No phone, he told her, lightly.

No phone. Okay, but how did he find people when he wanted to?

Finding people is easy, he’d said; it’s not getting found that’s hard.

It was a slow evening, and early. They stood side by side at the bar. She could feel his gaze; she let herself float on it. How long had he and Frank been friends, she’d asked.

He’d seemed amused. Strictly business, he said. And what about her? Who was she? Where was she from?

As she spoke, he looked at her consideringly, and sorrow rose up, closing over her. How little she had to show for her eighteen years on the planet! In an hour or so the room would be filled with frenetic diners, killing time until it killed them. They might as well be shot and stuffed themselves.

I don’t know about this town, though, she’d said. I’m starting to feel like I’m asleep.

So, maybe you need your sleep, he said. This isn’t a bad place for a nap. Why not nap? Soon you’ll be refreshed and ready to move on out.

She took to sitting at her window. Haze covered the hills in the distance; the sky had become opaque, and close. Where had that real day gone?

Sometimes after she finished delivering the orders in Nonie’s old car she’d just drive around, down the small highways to the shady dirt roads. Sometimes she thought she’d caught a glimpse of Eli in town, just rounding a corner, disappearing through a doorway; she wasn’t well, she thought—it seemed that maybe she never had been.

Maybe I’ll try to find myself a place out in the country, she told Nonie, and get my own car.

That would be great, Nonie said. I’ll help you look, if you want.

Wouldn’t you even miss me? she’d said.

Of course, Nonie said. But you wouldn’t be far. You’d come see us all the time.

And I’d keep helping you, she’d said.

And you’d keep helping me, Nonie said.

She can still see in perfect detail Zoe’s face as she saw it in the The White Rabbit, for the first and only time. Truly she could only have glimpsed it—in profile as Zoe and Eli left, or in the mirror over the bar—but she might as well have scrutinized it for hours. It’s almost as if she had been inside Zoe, looking into that mirror over the bar herself, seeing herself in the perfect dark skin, the perfect head, her hair almost shorn. She can feel Zoe’s delicate body working as if it were her own, and she can feel the weight of the sleeping baby strapped to Zoe’s back.

The lovely face with its long, wide-set eyes floats in Alma’s plastic-covered window now, unsmiling, distant.

Eli had waved as he and Zoe left, but it was as if she was watching him from behind dark glass; she didn’t wave back, or smile.

And Zoe appeared not to have seen her. The fact is, Zoe appeared not to see anything at all; Zoe had looked unearthly and singular, as if she were a blind woman.

Nonie was five months pregnant by the time she and Munsen told Kristina. She was superstitious, she said, and she’d had trouble before. She chuckled and patted her stomach. But this is getting pretty obvious, she said. I figured you were just being polite.

For months Munsen and Nonie had been aware there was a baby in the house.

Oh, her blue room! It had been pretty poor comfort that day.

Of course, it hadn’t really been her room for the five previous months.

And the lady at the real estate office! Irritably raking back the streaky hair, the rectangular glasses in their thin frames, the expectant expression that went blank when Kristina spoke, or changed to a hurried smile…

A little less than fifteen hundred dollars! Every penny she’d saved. Not quite enough, was it, even for some crumbling hut out there, all made out of candy.

While Nonie baked rolls and Munsen sanded down to satin the cradle he’d built for the invisible baby, she’d flipped through Munsen’s atlas. Chicago, Maine, Seattle, Atlanta—or why not go to one of those places really far away, where people spoke languages she couldn’t understand at all? Because that was the point—this direction or that—apparently it didn’t matter where she went.

The end of summer was already sweeping through town, hectic with color and heat, as if it were making a desperate stand against the darkness and cold ahead. Nearly a year had passed.

He was watching her as she walked right by him at the bar. Hey, he said, and held his hand out. No handshakes? No greetings, no how are yous, none of the customary effusions?

She had blushed deeply; she shook her hair back. All right, she said, greetings.

She remembers standing there, waiting for the blush to calm while he stretched lazily.

Well, since you ask, he’d said, here’s the data. A lot of travel, recently, a lot of work. And my girlfriend is gone.

It was as if there were other words inside those, in the way there are with jokes. That’s too bad, she said.

Why, exactly? he said, and the mortifying blush flared again.

To tell you the truth, he was saying, it was obvious almost from the beginning that there were going to be problems.

That woman had looked like someone with problems, she remembers having thought; that woman in the mirror looked like she was drifting there between the land of the living and the land of the dead.

And what was she up to herself these days, he’d wanted to know.

She took a deep breath to establish some poise in her thoughts. Since you ask, she said, I think nap time is just about up for me.

That very night, when she got back after work, he was there in the kitchen. He and Munsen were drinking beer, and he must have just finished saying something that made Nonie and Munsen laugh. She’d stood in the doorway, silenced.

There she is, Nonie said. How come you never brought this guy around? He’s okay.

Guess I don’t need to introduce anyone, she’d said.

Nonie and Munsen were sitting at the table, but he was lounging against the wall, looking at her, not quite smiling. It seemed I might not have a whole lot of time, he said. So I thought I’d drop on by to ask for your hand.

He waited for her to approach. She couldn’t feel herself moving. She laughed a little, breathlessly, as he removed her ring, looking at her. Dollar store, she said, and he dropped it into the ashtray on the kitchen table.

Wow! Munsen said. Okay!

There’s some stuff I have to deal with tonight, Eli said. Sit tight. I’ll be back in for you at noon.