The Cosmopolitans (15 page)

Bette awoke from her reverie and saw Hector's libidinous sparkle. One that clearly had not been ignited in many moons. She noted it cautiously, for one second considering jealousy, but then replacing that with concern for the etiquette of the workplace.

Valerie, too, was not blind. She held out her hand to him.

“Partner?”

He clasped it.

“Partner!”

They shook hands.

“Okay, chums.” Valerie had had her way with them, and now victorious, was done. She turned her back. On to the next challenge. “Let's get back to work.”

Chapter 14

T
he long, quiet nights of reading and radio had disappeared from Bette's life. The complexity lay outside her now, instead of within. And this signaled a great change. So great, in fact, that it provoked daily revelations, hurtling like meteors splintering off of newly discovered planets. There were, she now knew from experience, two worlds. The world of those who must generate their own urgent understanding versus the world of those to whom meaning arrives on a silver tray. She was transitioning from the former to the latter.

Being alone means doing all the work: the thinking, the feeling, the fetching, the creating of events and activities, the understanding of those events and activities. The cleaning up afterward. There are no mechanisms of avoidance. All is stark, and so the lonely are very,
very
well informed. But when one has the diversions of family, of young people fretting over their hair, or three-way conversations at home
and
in the
office—well, so much, so very much, is easily avoided that it now takes an enormous effort to actually confront what used to be entirely inescapable. What one can't avoid when alone is the truth of the matter, which becomes barely noticeable when distracted by others.

In Bette's case, the habit of loneliness had made her merciful because she so desired the mercy of others. This new apparatus of engagement did not automatically make her cruel, but mercy was no longer the first thing on her mind. It wasn't mercy alone that had passed into a forgotten place. So, too, had the crash of one teacup slamming the base of its saucer. The resonating groan of a rocking chair. The cacophonous click of the light switch following the resounding thwack of a closed book. Lost from her life were the hours spent on a page of words, taking in the author's intentions and unintentional gifts, carefully, slowly noticing their order, as one can only do in solitude and quiet. Lost too were the other hours spent before the window, thinking about human beings known and unknown, marveling in their beauty, their singularity, their struggles, gestures, tears, hopes, and fates. They had been so important, those strangers. They had been her world. Disappeared was the momentous meaning of a singular step taken on the street by each sole survivor. Newly lost from Bette's life were the sounds that had long befriended her: the milkman clinking bottles, the street sweepers who scratched the skin of the avenue, the night bus drivers and their quiet, lonesome riders. These ghosts had been replaced by Earl and Hortense and Valerie and even Hector. An army of people who knew her and knew her name and, in fact, belonged to
her. Who were accountable to her, and who were tangible. Being alone, whenever she was, by chance, alone these days, had an entirely different meaning than it had in the past. It meant temporary respite from others who would surely soon reappear, instead of the central substance of her breath.

The fact was that Bette had quickly shifted to thinking about herself in an entirely different way. The divide between who she was
before
and who she would from now on truly be, well . . . it was a cavernous revelation. The crypt, so to speak, was sealed on the old. She had loved Frederick. She had loved her brother. She had loved her mother. She had loved her father. And those loves had proved to be fatal errors. As a result, she had since loved only Earl. This choice, between Earl and loneliness, that had lasted thirty years, had lived quite actively as a threat.

For example, if Earl was in a play and had all his evenings absorbed, then the devil peeked through the surface of her life. The devil was pain. She would come home to no one and nothing. Have no one to shop for or cook for. No one to urge on, to listen to, to comfort, and hope for. She walked the streets with no one to talk it over with later, and no one stood by her side. Bette and Earl knew no pretense. They even talked openly about death. They discussed watching each other get old. The responsibility. And then the decline and final absence of one or the other. She knew they were friends for life. But only
now
could she see how much she had lived in the shadow of that final loss.

How would she have ever borne it?

She just had not faced that really, the impossibility
of life without him. Or he without her. But now, the survivor would have Hortense and all her friends and ideas, and her new whims and decorations, her songs, her passions, and all her information and will. Knowing this made Bette more able to recognize how bereft existence would have been on her own. Now that it was no longer to be. The relief of that potential pain, its removal from the realm of the possible. It let her see. It let her see how difficult her life had been. What she had had to endure, and that she had survived it, to this new moment . . . well, that was just a miracle. A miracle. She would never have to go back there again.

Most people have someone to go visit, and that was a fact they take for granted. Somewhere they could relax and another person did the cooking. Most people received Christmas cookies or birthday cards. Most people were considered into Thanksgiving plans and had Sundays organized around their pleasures. Most people had others who knew what they liked or needed and so could present the right book or the perfect slice of pie. What kind of sweater they preferred. Earl gave Bette a sweater for her fiftieth birthday that was V-neck with buttons and pockets. He knew. How? Because he looked and saw what she had chosen for herself. If he had given her snowflake designs across the chest with a tight pullover scoop neck, she would have had to bear that she was not seen, and her feelings about herself were still a secret. Most people have someone who knows what they like. They do not view these things as privileges. They see them as natural. A right. Like freedom of the press. And Bette, too, had felt that way about Earl.

Now that she had more, she realized how paltry their gift to each other had been in comparison. And therefore how much more precious. When others imagine people sitting at home alone on Christmas, they think of beggars in rags standing around a flaming oil drum by the Fulton Fish Market or in a gaggle somewhere passing the rum bottle, and even then there is a crowd of them. The lonely. Or Scrooge counting his gold. Or the man in an overcoat, hat pulled down over his tears stirring, stirring, stirring that sweetened cup of tea, trying to make it last. But the cared for don't realize that on their daily path of neighbors, workmates, and faces on the streets there are those, like Bette once was, who sit quietly looking out the window at other people's holiday lights, listening to other people's laughter, and finding the makings of other people's eggnog waiting in the morning trash.

From time to time Bette and Earl had found a stranger in their paths, one with even less than they. With not even that
one
door to knock on, that one person to say “Happy Birthday,” that one other glass to clink. And they would invite this person over for a drink of whiskey and piece of chicken, since a whole turkey was too much work, too big, and just didn't make sense, in the end. Actually, one year they had made the turkey, the stuffing, the macaroni and cheese from Earl's mother's kitchen. They had made the cranberries and the creamed onions from Ohio. But it had brought a great sadness to the both of them. All that food, some candles, and that stray fellow from Washington Square Park, the student Earl had befriended, who didn't have the bus fare back to South Carolina for
the holidays. The boy was not buoyed by all the trimmings bereft of voices. He couldn't hide how depressing he found it, the emptiness. And so, they decided to not try that one again. They decided they didn't need it.

They had these moments together.

They had not had to endure them alone.

Occasionally Bette had wished that Old Mr. Tibbs would invite her to Christmas dinner or Easter Sunday. She wanted the taste of lamb. She could barely remember leg of lamb or mint jelly and knew that one bite would bring it all back to life. But the invitation never came. From time to time Earl spent Christmas or Thanksgiving at a bar, or if he had a “boyfriend” at the bar, perhaps at some queer party uptown or a theater party downtown, and he'd get drunk and try to get laid, or had gotten laid but wanted love. He always wanted love. Poor Earl. He always wanted it. Always. Poor Earl. And when it didn't come, he'd knock on her door because, after all, human beings must have someone to speak to. They must, in the end, ultimately speak.

Now, though, at the age of fifty, Bette was starting to believe in the intangibles of life, like luck and providence.
There was nothing like joy
, she noted,
to make people believe in the inevitability and preordination of good fortune
. Perhaps she was not ready to attribute her current state of true happiness to God's will, but she couldn't help the creeping feeling that this was meant to be. That Bette was meant to have a context. There was a certain arrogance about those who received multiple birthday cards. But now, with her sudden change of fortune, she could see how others
were so easily persuaded into thinking that their luck was natural. That it did not even exist at all, it was just so inevitable. Their luck. Attention, she had come to find, was disarming. It made life into an unconscious blur. The only reason, in fact, that she continued the practice of trying to understand her own meaning was out of habit, really. She simply did not know what else to do when riding the bus. She did not know where other people put their minds when the truth was not so pressing.

Tonight, like every one of these new nights,
after dinner
was a magical time of enrichment and success. Not a deep and festering wound looking for some temporary relief. This was the shift from a life of occasional joy in the magic of small things to overwhelming, sustaining joy. To the regular. It invited her to blindness about the other sufferers she'd left behind. The world was less of an organism. It just was. Others mattered less and became less real because she had her own company. In a way she felt crueler and more selfish. She could feel her happiness creating a wall between “us” and “them.” Bette knew, for a fact, that that far-off summer when her birthday next appeared, her fifty-first birthday, there would be more than Earl's bouquet of flowers. Earl's card. His gift. There would also be Hortense planning ahead, and maybe even Valerie would offer her a drink. Maybe Valerie would whisper in Hector's ear and a bonus envelope would appear, or a card. Another card! That was a family. She and Earl didn't have to do everything themselves.

In the future, perhaps Hortense would marry. Bette and Earl could be the elderly relations and get invited
habitually to the new couple's home for Thanksgiving. For Christmas and for Easter. She'd bring the pie but someone else would make the lamb. She could taste it. That lamb. She and Earl could play with the babies and then escape them. Come home early, maybe to have a drink with Valerie and her kind. From one crowd to another. Invite them all to see Earl on the stage and then go out for a table filled with friends. Real friends, the kind Earl always yearned for. The kind that stick around. And when they could no longer work, Hortense's children would come to the house with hot soup in a jar, and stories about what the teacher said, or who was the best Yankee, which song was the new thing. And all of that.

Chapter 15

B
ette came home with three gorgeous filets of flounder from Joe's Fish Market, and some mushrooms and a pound of broccoli plus three large potatoes for baking. But when she walked in, the kitchen was occupied by Hortense, arms up to her elbows in ingredients, nose in, of all things, a cookbook. There was no special reason why Bette had never used a cookbook. She relied on hand-scrawled recipes from neighbors and the advice of shopkeepers for her recipes. And every now and again she'd try something from her imagination or that she'd noticed advertised at Romanoff's, like grilled cheese with tomato. Or cream cheese and olives on pumpernickel bread.

Hortense was making dessert. A nine-inch square Betty Crocker instant chocolate cake, from a box. Made extra special with a topping of broiled marshmallow frosting.

“It says
cream
three tablespoons Parkay margarine.
Bette, what does
cream
mean? Add cream to the margarine?”

Bette had never even tasted margarine. Since the war, Oleo had to stand in because no one ever had real butter. It reminded her of hard times and of poor Anthony.

“It means to soften the margarine, make it creamy.”

“Okay. But how?”

“With a wooden spoon? Perhaps a fork.”

“Thanks, Bette. Wait, the recipe calls for two tablespoons of cream.”

“I guess they mean for you to add it then.”

Bette knew better than to get involved. This was Hortense's way of growing up. Of doing her part but asserting her own point of view about what constituted an appropriate food for the dinner table.

“Half cup chopped walnuts. One cup Kraft miniature marshmallows. Mix lightly.”

Truth be told, Bette had also never eaten a marshmallow. Well, so be it. They each bring what they have to give. Suddenly a scene came to Bette's mind from a novel she had read called
A Tree Grows in Brooklyn
. There was a poor family living in Brooklyn. So poor that sometimes they didn't have enough to eat. But the mother made sure that no matter the deprivation, no one's dignity would be undermined. One morning there was nothing for breakfast but three cups of coffee, and so the mother set one for each person. Herself, her husband, and their daughter. Starving, the father devoured his cup, watching the mother slowly sipping hers. Then he turned his attention to their child, who
used the hot drink to warm her hands but never tasted a drop.

“You're wasting it,” the father lapped lasciviously, looking for a way to get that coffee into his exhausted soul.

“It's her cup,” the mother insisted. “It's hers to do with as she likes.”

Bette had always been moved by that scene, the right of every family member to their own way of doing what they needed to do. That's what love is, really. The recognition of that simple fact.

“It looks great,” she said to Hortense. “I can't wait to try it.”

Soon Earl arrived home, tipsy, and happy about it.

“I had a glass of wine and a bottle of wine,” he said, laughing, and then produced two more bottles of real Italian Chianti, each encased in a straw basket good for hanging in someone's cellar, awaiting special occasions. Clearly this was a special occasion, Bette noted. A joyful celebration simply of being together. And her heart was so open. This was her life now.

Three hours later, marshmallow cake devoured, Bette and Earl were sitting next to each other on the couch, smiles larger than their own faces, hands over their own eyes as Hortense had instructed, waiting as told to do, and warned absolutely not to peek.

“Okay,” Hortense called out from the darkness. “Now!”

Earl and Bette slowly opened their eyes to a seemingly empty apartment. Then they could see Hortense's arm slither from behind the front door to place the needle
on the Victrola's spinning disc. She landed it expertly and the music began to fill the room. A scratchy recording of Aaron Copland's
Appalachian Spring
came into their lives. The front door swung open, and Hortense leapt over the threshold, hovered and loomed, in black leotard and black tights, assuming the stance and gestures she had learned by watching Martha Graham's dancers, the junior company members, and students who earned some nickels by teaching “movement” at the New Dance Group. She strode barefoot, squared her arms, becoming an ancient Greek column, a temple, and a vase. She stomped, at one with history. She held and folded at the waist, a living hieroglyphic. And finally, in what Hortense had come to understand to be a “modern” flourish, she ran barefoot, dipped, held, and crumpled . . . into death.

Bette and Earl waited until they were both sure that it was over and then clapped wildly. Earl was the most enthusiastic. Bette, unsure, trusted his lead.

“That was fantastic,” he said. “That was so . . . artful.” He clapped and clapped. “You're really on to something.”

“My,” Bette said, also clapping strongly, but still a little bit confused. She had been to the ballet many times. And seen Agnes de Mille, of course. But this?

Earl touched her arm. “That's the future, Bette.”

“Really?”

More future. More future. That's all anyone talked about, wasn't it? First television, now this. And then Bette wondered if she could get a slogan out of that. Something to bring to Valerie the following morning.
Everyone thinks they know what's coming
. Was that enough? Okay, she realized, she was open to change. That was now true. The past had certainly not worked out for someone like her. The future was the place. She could invest in that.

Earl was still clapping.

Earl seemed so happy. She enjoyed it. He usually didn't get this drunk until he'd gone out into the night, but she didn't mind. She was glad he'd stayed around. He seemed so playful. He had a kind of parental pride for Hortense. Like Daddy sitting at the side of a Little League game marveling that his girl could hold a bat.
Do girls play Little League
? They probably did not.
What is Little League?
It was one of those terms bandied about, but truthfully Bette wasn't sure of what it meant exactly. Children playing baseball, wearing uniforms like Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig, on sandlots in those new housing developments on Long Island the GIs had bought into. She'd never seen one and didn't care to. There was no good reason to move out of the city, no matter what people said about
schools
. It was better for children to be free than enslaved, and growing up in New York City was schooling enough to make up for not having Little League. Anyway, Earl certainly was laughing himself silly. Like it was some private little joke that kept cracking him up but nobody else could understand. Then Bette felt silly too and started laughing just because he was laughing. She was so thankful that they had a family that valued art, not batting averages. Bette was thankful that Hortense was an actress and a
modern dancer
instead
of a housewife out there. Bette noticed herself being
grateful
and wondered sincerely if religion would soon follow. She was curious to watch herself and had no idea where it would all go. All this happiness. Where would it lead?

“This is really exciting,” Earl said.

“Yes,” Bette laughed, wiping tears from her eyes. “But why? I don't have a clue as to what is so funny.”

“Tell her, Earl.” That was Hortense.

“Tell me, Earl.” Bette was having so much fun.

“Tell her about the architecture,” Hortense said, placing the record back in its sleeve.

“It's like architecture,” Earl said.

“How?” Bette asked.

“It's like buildings,” Earl said, slowing down a bit. “New shapes for the modern age.” He stopped laughing.

Bette thought about what he'd said. The city was changing, true. There were buildings going up everywhere, and most of them were for business purposes. Walking down the street had a different feeling when her shoulders grazed sleek glass and steel instead of ornate mortar and decorative iron. Both were beautiful, but they had different meanings. One night Bette had hugged a building. She'd told Earl about it and he admitted to the same thing. They'd both, of their own accord, pressed face and full body, open arms against its flank. She could see how buildings could influence humans, instead of only the other way around. It was natural. People and their creations constantly interact, transform each other. Always reflecting, influencing, reflecting.

“I understand,” she said.

“Yeah,” Earl sighed, somewhat relieved. “There is change.”

But one thing perplexed Bette. How did Earl know so much about this, when she had never heard a thing?

“The body in space,” Hortense prompted. The girl was standing still now. In the middle of the room.

“The body,” Earl said, turning toward Bette but not really engaging her. He seemed to be figuring it all out right then. “Is different. The body is different.” He wasn't sure of where he was going, what his point was. It ellipsed away. Something vague . . .

“What do you mean?”

“The body,” he tried again, “is different in different spaces.”

Bette felt confused. She started to become a bit muted. “Space?” She remembered Valerie and the promise of jetpacks. “Do you mean like Mars?”

“
Yeessss,”
Earl said strangely, like he'd changed his accent. He had a weird expression on his face. She wasn't sure what he wanted to convey.

“I don't get it.”

“Look,” he said and then stopped, changed his tone. “Like coming from Mars but living on Earth.”

She waited for it all to coalesce. His point.

“Look,” Earl said again. His brow was tight. “When it is not your world, the body has to twist.”

Bette was surprised to find herself thinking, for the very first time, that maybe this
was
her world. And then she thought that if that were so, it would come between her and Earl, because it could never be his world. His exclusion was too large. What would she do in that case? This had never been a consideration before.
Whatever would she do if the world was letting her in and continuing to keep him out? Her impulse was to stay with Earl, no matter what. The loss of Earl would be greater than the loss of her new purpose or engagement or excitement or goal, her connection to others, her cousin, her job. The loss of Earl would be greater. Why was she thinking this way? It was silly, really. Nothing had happened. Why was she thinking like this?

Bette looked around her. Earl and Hortense were frozen. She felt a strange heaviness in the apartment. Like there was no air. But the windows were open, there was in fact air.

“Why?” she asked. This shouldn't be so hard to explain. She should be able to comprehend this.

“The body has to twist,” he said again. He was looking right at her now. There was so much that was strained in his face, she barely recognized him.

“What do you mean?”

“There is too much punishment.”

He seemed ashy. Like he was going to faint.

“Feelings!” That was Hortense's voice. Where was she? In the background somewhere.

Bette felt a kind of fog circling around her like she had felt once when she'd swooned in the middle of Macy's. Hortense's voice seemed to be coming at her as if through a megaphone or across the sea.

“Tell her, Earl!” That was Hortense again.

Earl looked terrified. He scowled at Bette. “Well you see . . .”

“Tell me what?” Something was wrong. Was he dying?

Earl looked down. Bette was aware of Hortense's
rigid body somewhere in the swirl. The world was shifting, the floor was sinking, maybe the apartment was on fire.

“You see, Bette . . .”

“No, I don't see.” Bette felt wrong. She had done something wrong. A terrible thing was happening. Earl looked like a coward, how was that possible?

Hortense took a step toward them.

“Bette,” she squeaked. “Earl and I are in love.”

Earl grimaced. He never would have put it that way.

“In love?”

“Wait a minute . . .” He looked like a pile of ashes. “I wouldn't say . . .”

“Isn't it romantic?” Hortense rushed in on them.

Bette could feel Hortense's devouring flame leap out to grab her and Earl, sizzling their skin so that the fat dripped onto the burning carpet. The world was being consumed.

“Isn't it, Bette? Isn't it so, so romantic?” Hortense whirled around like girls do in movies. “That just at the beginning of my life, I have had the fortune to meet my true soul mate and so my path through the world will be one of love and devotion. My parents will object, of course, but that doesn't matter because Earl and I have found a deep love. One that defies all convention.”

Bette, as she had been, ceased to exist.

“In love?” She looked into Earl's frightened eyes. He had no soul. “What do you mean
in love
?”

Hortense threw herself at Bette's feet, her arms strewn across Bette's lap and Earl's as well. “I know I can speak openly with you, Cousin.”

Bette looked at this thing. Hortense was some kind of crow. The sound of her voice was a threat to crops.

Hortense was smiling. How can anyone smile?

“Earl and I are lovers,” she destroyed. “I have given him my virginity, and now we are soul mates forever. Like you and my father.”

“Lovers?”

“I thought you loved him. But when I found out that you didn't, that you're just friends, I knew we could all be happy together. A family. There has to be a couple for there to be a true family. You know that, Cousin Bette. There has to be . . . that bond.”

“But Earl and I are not
friends
.”

Hortense was stopped for a moment. Something did not fit into her categories of knowledge. There was a thud. The Chianti bottle had fallen over.

Earl snapped at Bette. “Stop that.”