Part 13 (2/2)

”Honey,” I said, ”let that be a lesson to you. Be careful who you f.u.c.k in a moment of youthful carelessness. They can keep turning up for the rest of your life. I mean, like forever.”

”Yeah, remember that T-s.h.i.+rt your friend Charlie had. Some guy with a beard and granny gla.s.ses and underneath it said 'Someone I slept with in the sixties.'”

”Please,” I said, ”spare me the story of my life.”

I hated myself for the words I'd just said. I wanted to call Walt back, to tell him I was sorry, to give him a particularly extravagant package of food to take home with him, wherever it was he would go. But then my glance traveled out the window and I could see him, a little to the side of the gla.s.s door, peering in to get a glimpse of something of whose nature he was already far too well aware. I saw him watching jasmine and Armando laughing with me, our heads thrown back too far, our mouths too wide, too open. I knew that he knew exactly what was being said, exactly what was being laughed at. There was no reason for him to be seeing it. If only he had left and gone home when I sent him, he wouldn't have had to know. He was always doing it to himself; it was always his fault; he was always seeing more than he needed to, more than would do him good. And that is why I never could forgive him. I could pity him, but I would always want to hurt him, and I would always find a way of doing it, and, however long it took- it could be thirty years next time, or fifty, or a hundred- he would come back. He would always come back.

I had to act as if I didn't see him and walk into the back office, pretend to pore over the numbers printed on the spreadsheets, seeing him in my mind's eye, alone on the sidewalk, watching the people coming into my store, carrying out in their full hands the things he couldn't have. He must have known what I was thinking. He was only standing there to make me think these things; it was why he did the things he did, to make me do things, to make me think things that were even worse than the things I'd done.

I couldn't help it. Nothing was my fault.

I let jasmine and Armando close up, clean out the showcase, take home what couldn't be salvaged, put the rest into the refrigerator, swab the white enamel surfaces, mop the white-tiled floor, the occasional tile imprinted with a dark blue, pompous-looking fish. I pretended to be working on accounts; occasionally I would write down a false number, something with no connection to anything in the world. I waved to Jasmine and Armando when they said good night, not looking up, as if it would be fatal to remove my attention from what was spread before me even for the second that a civil farewell might require.

I must have sat there for two hours. The silvery twilight of a steamy June changed all at once, turned yellow blue, and then blue black. I called the car service. I stood for a while in the front part of the store, trying to breathe in what I could usually rely on: the satisfaction of knowing that all this was mine. I tried to revel in the calligraphy on the labels of the mustards and jams, the roseate and amber vinegars, the chocolates in the shapes of mermaids and sh.e.l.ls. But my eye kept falling on the empty showcases, which looked as if they had been stolen from, as if an invading army had entered and, at gunpoint, cleared them out. Their emptiness seemed shameful to me, ruinous. I turned the lights on in the store, inhaling the sage, the cinnamon, the cardamom, the chaste hominess of the peach pies sleeping underneath their plastic sheets.

Outside the store, the driver was waiting for me in the car. He was reading a book; the light falling on him from the car ceiling illuminated him and the book as if they were onstage. I didn't know if he could see me. I was afraid to do one thing or another: leave the store or stay inside. Anything I would do seemed dangerous. Finally, the driver looked up, saw me, and waved. I knew what his hair oil would smell of: a fruity yet bracing smell, suggesting his determination to both cut a swathe and better himself and his family. I would be all right with him.

As I walked out to the sidewalk, the breeze lifted my skirt a bit and blew some papers past me, and a plastic bag. The driver opened the door for me, nodded a polite greeting, waited for me to settle myself, then closed the door with a civilized and plosive thud. I looked around to see if anyone was lingering. If Walt was.

The block seemed empty. But I knew better than to trust that. He might not seem to be there. He might have pretended to have gone. But he was there, even if I couldn't see him at that moment. He was there; he was waiting for me. He always would be.

Storytelling.

I went to Florida to see my brother Ted because I was tired of reading and writing. I'd just finished the first draft of a novel- a labor of two years. I knew what was wrong with it- everything that was wrong with it- but I couldn't think of how to fix it, or even how to take the first step. It came upon me that I had misspent my life: all those years laboring over words, words, words, and for what? What difference did it make to anyone? Who cared what I had to say? I had lost the appet.i.te for telling.

I wanted to visit Ted because, whatever else s.h.i.+fts in my life, one thing is constant: I have always loved my brother. Is this really so unusual or does it just seem so to me, that there should be a person you have loved and been loved by your whole life? What does this say, my finding it so unusual, about the age we live in, or the way I live?

Perhaps it isn't love I'm talking about, constant love, but rather constant enjoyment, which is even more rare. I guess there must have been times in childhood when Ted and I didn't get along, but I don't remember them. I remember always a sense of safety with him, a safety of a rather special kind, because although he was older than I, he wasn't the oldest child. Our parents had, in effect, had two families: three older children who were like aunts and uncles to us, whom we seemed hardly to know, who had moved out of the house and married before we started school, whose children were a bit of an embarra.s.sment to us, and whom we embarra.s.sed.

Our parents were worn-out by the time we came and it seemed to me later (though it's nothing I would have thought of as a child, or even while they were alive: they died when Ted and I were in our twenties, in a car accident) they were a little abashed by our existence, proof as it was of their untimely fecundity. They tended to us- we were physically well cared for- but they had no interest in our entertainments. Mostly, they left us alone. We had the orphan's luxury without the orphan's anxiety. We understood that our parents didn't think about us much, and so we couldn't go to them for understanding. Ted guessed, though I don't think it dawned on me, that our parents couldn't be looked to as a source of pleasure, either. We divided the world up, then, into kingdoms or protectorates of which he and I were in charge. His domain was pleasure; mine was understanding. That meant that the smooth movements of home life- that which made it more than bearable: decoration, desserts, no hurt feelings, no anger that lasted after sundown- were his charge. He made things happen and later I would suggest what they had meant.

He was popular in school, an astonis.h.i.+ng social success, but his grades weren't good. I had no friends but was valedictorian. So he went to a poor state school and I to Radcliffe on a scholars.h.i.+p.

We were proud of each other in those years, but our orbits didn't touch. Happily, I watched him drive by in convertibles, picked up for tennis or for swimming by bronzed G.o.ds, their golden hair absorbing more than its fair share of light. Sweetly, every year he drove me to Cambridge in our sky blue Rambler, the only family car. Then after college he came back to New York and worked for an advertising agency, where he met Pete.

It would be wrong to say that Ted came out to me: there was no need. That he would have a man seemed to me unremarkable. That we could keep it from our parents the expected thing. Pete and I liked each other; we liked to laugh at the same things, and we both loved Ted. Ted was twenty-five when they moved to Fort Lauderdale and opened a wallpaper business. They've been there ever since. Twenty-five years.

They enjoy their comforts. And I travel to see them when I want comforting. Their house (which, as Ted says, is a living hymn to wallpaper) looks over a golf course. It has all the things I enjoy that I wouldn't think of having: a refrigerator with crushed ice that appears, magically, through the door, a swimming pool, a hot tub, a shower as big as my Upper West Side kitchen.

Ted picks me up at the airport. He takes my winter coat: ”You still own one of these?” He carries my bag, complains about the weight of my laptop.

”We'll bury all this under a palm tree while you're here. But I'm not even going to give you the time to unpack. We'll lock everything in the trunk. We're having lunch by the water. I want to introduce you to jean-Claude.”

”So who's Jean-Claude?”

”Jean-Claude is an expert on bathroom lighting. Particularly boat bathroom lighting. He works on our upmarket jobs. That's where we met. He's from Gren.o.ble. If he's not from outer s.p.a.ce. I'm never quite sure. There's something a little extraterrestrial about him. But as our grandmother would have said, he's good for what ails you. At the very least, he's awfully pretty.”

He pointed to a table where a man was sitting alone, a man of about our age, fifty or so. He was attractive, certainly, but I wouldn't have called him pretty; there was nothing fine or fresh about his looks, and nothing girlish. His hair was thick, dark brown with a few strands of gray. His eyes were bluish green and gave the simultaneous appearance of being hooded and alert, as if he couldn't decide whether to succ.u.mb to something or spring for its throat. His s.h.i.+rt was Polo, navy blue, tucked into khaki trousers. He wore loafers without socks.

”So,” he said, before I had sat down. ”You're wondering whether to start coloring your hair. Don't. I love the silver. It makes you look experienced. People aren't going to want to take advantage of you. But with that wonderful skin, those fabulous eyes, of course they'll be intrigued. And, you begin dyeing, it's nothing but enslavement.”

”This is Jean-Claude,” said Ted.

”I'll bet you want her to color her hair,” he said. ”So you look younger.”

”I want her to start when I start.”

”Edward, please. I can't begin to tell you the calamity of someone with your complexion embarking on such a course. So, you're depressed,” he said to me. ”What happened? Have you lost your lover?”

”I don't have a lover,” I said. ”I've been married for twenty years.”

”And how old is your husband?”

”Fifty-eight.”

”You need a lover.”

”My problems aren't about love. They're about work. I'm tired of my work.”

”I understand completely. Then you must travel. When I'm tired of my work, I go somewhere completely new. That's how I got to America.”

The waiter came by and took our drink order. lean-Claude ordered Beaujolais nouveau, which had just arrived that week.

”Tell me about your coming to America,” I said. Recognizing that I was feeling curiosity, I realized how long I'd gone without.

”Yes, tell me,” my brother said. ”I've never known.”

”First, we take a moment to appreciate the beautiful young waiter. If you're young, you don't have to do anything. l.u.s.t your health and youth is beautiful. Look at the fresh color of his lips, even his gums are beautiful when he smiles. Because everything of him is healthy it says, 'Nothing will grow old and sick and dead.'”

”How's Ray?” my brother said.

”Terrible. Suffering. Dying.”

”lean-Claude volunteers with the AIDS crisis center. He takes people to their doctors' appointments, helps them with meals. This guy Ray that he helps is, what is he, lean-Claude, twenty-three? You're very good to him.”

”Well, what I am feeling is it's the least I can do. It's my way of saying 'Thank G.o.d,' when I am spared. I am not sick, and really I deserve to be sick, so much more than these other people. I mean, I was really promiscuous. Not only that, I made a living off it.”

”Being sick isn't something anyone deserves,” I said.

”I know what you mean. But I did all the things you are supposed to do to get it. And I'm spared. So I do this in grat.i.tude.”

”You were telling us how you came to America.”

”Well, of course, it starts in Gren.o.ble. I'm a b.a.s.t.a.r.d, I mean literally. Let's say that right away, because it isn't something that bothers me or something I try to hide. It's like the color of my eyes: just something that's there, that I was born with. So why try to hide it? My mother was very young when I was born and she left for Canada with a man when I was six. My grandparents were kind and good, but too old for a wild boy like I was.

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