Part 16 (1/2)

This got his attention. Moose opened his eyes.

”And I thought you might, since you see her regularly, you might have ...”

”Grip of what?” he asked.

”Well, I don't know.”

Moose fixed his eyes on the sliding gla.s.s door, beyond which lay his small balcony, the autumnal grounds of Versailles, Rockford, Illinois, and the world, whose immensity the gla.s.s door thus synechdochally invoked. In his years of teaching, there had been five or six students who had seemed, if only briefly, only partially, to be edging toward something that might have been a first, glimmering suggestion of the vision he wished to impart. For Moose, the experience of their proximity had been a sweet agony whose nearest a.n.a.log was love, a love more coiled and hopeful and desperate than any he had known in his amorous life. Male or female, it made no difference. Had Moose been told, at such a time, of such a student, that said student was in the grip of something in the grip of something, he would have experienced a catastrophic excitement. But Charlotte was not such a student, nor faintly reminiscent of one. Even those more promising kids had never really seen it; they had graduated from the college and drifted away into the service industries, and occasionally Moose would glimpse one hauling children through Media Play or buying soil at Home Depot, at which point he hid himself urgently, flailingly, ducking behind racks of lawn mowers, lunging around walls of frozen food, desperate to avoid the mundane and mortifying aftermath of his hope.

Still. In the grip of something. In the grip of something. It intrigued him. It intrigued him.

”I'll watch her, Ellen,” Moose promised. ”I'll look very carefully today, this afternoon. She's coming to my office at four.”

”Thanks, Moose.”

There was a pause. ”And how are you?” he asked.

”Not bad.”

Moose heard a falter in his sister's voice, and was moved to declare with feeling, ”It's good to talk to you, Ellen,” meaning it despite the labyrinth of discomfort that had interposed itself between them, a hangover from so much time spent together long ago, when he was someone else. He felt a deep, awful tenderness for his little sister.

”Thanks,” she said shyly. ”Same.”

And Moose heard her happiness then-Oh, the joy that came of dispensing happiness to others, of entering happiness's interlocking circuitry! Yet even now Moose felt the persistence of whatever worry he'd heard in Ellen's voice before before the happiness his remark had occasioned, and no sooner was the phone back in its cradle than he was felled by a crash of despair on his sister's behalf. We're all alone, he thought, crumpling back onto the fragment of living room couch that wasn't draped in maps of Rockford. We are all alone. the happiness his remark had occasioned, and no sooner was the phone back in its cradle than he was felled by a crash of despair on his sister's behalf. We're all alone, he thought, crumpling back onto the fragment of living room couch that wasn't draped in maps of Rockford. We are all alone.

After several minutes of gloomy reverie, Moose was distracted by the sound of Priscilla turning over in bed, a sound that induced in him a tw.a.n.g of good luck at being married to someone who could sleep until-he glanced at his watch-ten-forty-five on her days off, who slept as if sleeping were a sport. He left the couch and went to look at his wife. She was dozing, her hand in a book, a trill of lavender visible above the bedclothes, one of the silken undergarments that tangled around her in bed and around Moose, too, who slept in the nude. They smelled like flowers. Before Priscilla, he'd hated to sleep because of the nightmares-closing his eyes was like jumping off a cliff-but sleeping with her was like slipping into a warm sea and floating there, the nighties coiling like sea anemones around his wrists and ankles.

Priscilla opened her eyes, saw Moose in the doorway and held out her arms. He lay down beside her, mute while she kissed his face, his big strange face that appeared monstrous to him in the mirror sometimes, filled with hues a face should not have-green, purple, chartreuse-kissed him and said, ”How's it going, silly?” and he said, ”Okay,” which seemed the most accurate summary he could muster of the gusts of happiness and unhappiness that had buffeted him so far that morning.

”Are you working?” she asked.

”Sort of.”

”I'm reading Moll Flanders,” Moll Flanders,” she said, sleepily. she said, sleepily.

”So I saw,” he teased. ”With your eyes closed.”

She smiled and rose from the bed, slender legs still brown under the short hem of her lavender chemise, though it had been months since she'd lain on the balcony in her bikini. Moose followed her into the kitchen.

”You were tired last night,” he said.

”Ugh, it was craziness. Not to mention we were short-staffed-Andy took another sick day.”

”The dolt,” Moose muttered.

”Meanwhile, I'm starving,” Priscilla said. She was adding milk and eggs to powdered pancake mix, blending it all with a large metal whisk. She always ate pancakes or waffles or French toast on her days off, yet she stayed thin-lissome, even. ”Want to hand me that pan?”

”I've got it.” Moose b.u.t.tered the pan and placed it over the burner. Then he gathered Priscilla into his arms, enfolding his slender wife in his gigantic embrace, inhaling the light, peppery smell of her underarms.

This was the secret life. For most people, Moose a.s.sumed, the secret life was more terrible than anyone could imagine. These couples one saw barely speaking-their lives looked bad enough in public! And yet, would anyone guess at his? Of course, it was unlikely to last; Moose expected this. He had proceeded through the years along a ma.s.sif of s.h.i.+fting plates, his steps growing more fearful, more tentative each time the ground buckled under him. But for now Priscilla was happy, remained happy, in part (Moose sensed) out of sheer relief at being emanc.i.p.ated from her marriage to Wes Victor, a local root-ca.n.a.l specialist who'd called her a lazy cow and demanded that she sell Amway products, who'd been disgusted by her failure, in three years, to produce even one child. Wes had remarried within months of their divorce, and now took evident relish in herding his copious progeny past Moose and Priscilla's table at the Cherryvale food court, where they went sometimes on a Sat.u.r.day. Moose watched his wife's face very carefully during these encounters, attuned to the smallest flicker of regret or remorse as Priscilla saw her former and much more wealthy husband pa.s.s with his new wife, who tugged one kid by the hand, pushed a second in a stroller, carried a third in a drooping sack attached to her back and a fourth inside her womb, which led the way at a salute. But Moose saw only relief. ”Look how he doesn't even help her,” Priscilla said once, in the wondering, reverent tones of someone who, through a minor fluke of rescheduling, has avoided a plane crash.

Priscilla poured batter into four hissing pads. ”Go. Work,” she said, patting Moose out the kitchen door. ”I've got my book.”

In his living room, Moose was greeted by the major nineteenth-century surveyors' maps of Rockford-1858, '71, '76, '92-along with an array of twentieth-century maps extending to the present day. The Rock River spasmed identically through the middle of each, accentuating the changes around it: the gradual accretion of factories in the last century followed by their gradual dissolution in this one. Moose stared at the maps. It was all right there, the narrative of industrial America told in these glyphs: a tale that began with the rationalization of objects through standardization, abstraction and ma.s.s production, and concluded with the rationalization of human beings through marketing, public relations, image consulting and spin. Yet were Moose to invite a student to look at the maps (as he'd done many times), they would not be able to see this. He marveled and puzzled and raged at the awful gap between his vision and other people's, at his own consistent failure to bridge it. Yet what could he do but try? And keep trying, in hopes that someone, at last, would look back at him with recognition.

At the sound of the shower, Moose rose from the couch. Priscilla was in the bathroom, lifting the lavender nightie over her head, pink toothbrush dangling lazily from her mouth. Steam floated up from behind the shower curtain, mingling with the smell of pancake syrup. Moose stood behind his wife at the sink and slipped his hand down that hard, slightly brown belly, kissing her neck. She laughed, rinsing suds from her teeth, then led him by the hand back into the bedroom, the bed still tussled and fragrant with her sleep, led him there and encircled him with her brown arms and legs. They made love quickly.

Afterward, Moose watched Priscilla's sleeping face while ”Dancing in the Moonlight” played softly on her small transistor radio in the kitchen. At Cherryvale last year, he'd noticed her eyeing a poster for package tours to Hawaii: a couple thras.h.i.+ng through creamy surf, the man vigorous and young, unlike Moose, the woman slender and elastic, like Priscilla. ”Would you like to go there?” he had asked, but she'd shrugged this off, knowing they couldn't afford it, knowing Moose hadn't boarded a plane since his return from New Haven twelve years ago. But Moose had resolved to take Priscilla there-to Hawaii, yes he would-and in the months since then he'd lain awake many nights, trying to acclimate himself: Fruit drinks. Coconuts. Salt.w.a.ter. Happy people everywhere, people like Priscilla-Moose longed to be in their midst. But the trip frightened him, too, and he hadn't mentioned it.

Eventually he left the bed and headed back to his maps. Only then did he hear the shower still running in the bathroom and reach behind the plastic curtain to turn it off.

Charlotte rode to Winnebago College directly after school, her body alive with spidery antic.i.p.ation. The twisty college road, the lunar quiet of the campus lulled her into a state not unlike what she experienced at night, sleepwalking from her bedroom to her bike. They were connected, Moose and Michael West, linked in a relations.h.i.+p of cause and effect that Charlotte could not have explained but felt deeply, instinctively. It had all begun with her uncle: first the sense of waiting, then seeing Michael West that second time. And Moose's advice--follow your desire-which had worked almost supernaturally.

She left her bike in the rack and made her way toward Meeker Hall, walking slowly because she was early. Wandering the curled paths, going in circles to make the extra minutes pa.s.s, she remembered last night, lying with him right after they had done it-not on the kitchen counter but again, upstairs (it was in her notes). ”Where were you before you came to Rockford?” she asked, as he gazed at the ceiling.

”New York.”

”And where before that?”

He glanced at her, moonlight spinning on his eye. ”Overseas.”

”Which sea?”

Rather than answer, he snapped a k.u.mquat from his tree and broke the skin with his teeth. Its essence wafted over Charlotte: tart, bitter, sweet. Was it the smell of love? She waited for him to answer, but he sucked out the k.u.mquat's insides and nudged the empty rind toward the open window.

As she was leaving, Charlotte paused in the back doorway, facing him, and forced herself to speak. ”Maybe you could give me something.”

”Give you something.” He didn't understand.

”Anything.”

She shouldn't have to ask. She had to ask for everything.

”Ah,” he said at last. ”A gift.”

”It doesn't have to be new,” Charlotte added quickly. ”I mean, you don't have to buy it.”

His eyes moved, he was thinking.

”It could be that,” she said lightly, pointing at his chest. The bead of amber on its leather string was hidden beneath his T-s.h.i.+rt, but he knew what she meant. If he gives me that, then he loves me, Charlotte thought, and knew that it was true, that the other, smaller proofs had proved nothing. She looked into the mystery of his face-angles, corners, depths-the face of a stranger to whom she had given her heart.

”Or something else,” she said casually.

”Something else,” he agreed.