him with its slap of sourness, and then he liked it. He wondered what the wine said about her. It wasn’t what he was expecting.
"I don’t know if my mother would give thanks for her life. She thought that God hated her," he heard himself saying. The confession wasn’t a form he often practiced or was comfortable in, but here he was, confessing to some strange woman who had plied him with sour wine. “And she didn’t even believe in God! She might have thought He hated her for that. I was never exactly sure. It didn’t make a lot of sense. I mean, if there is no God, why worry about what He thinks about you?”
"She told you that? That she thought God hated her?"
Philip shook his head. "She didn’t exactly say it, no,” he said. “But she’d kind of hint at it. I’m pretty sure that’s what she thought. I thought God didn’t hate people. I thought He was supposed to be sort of loving or whatever. I don’t believe in God, either,” he added. “So I’m probably doomed too.”
"Well, everyone is doomed," she said. "I hate to break it to you. Certain truths are self-evident. Everyone is doomed, and life isn’t fair. People get sick, don’t they? They get old and that’s what happens. Bad things happen to all sorts of people. It's like a lottery, except it’s a lottery nobody ever wins and everybody loses, it’s just a question of when. It's fate. Not all questions have answers. The most important ones don't. You know it’s an important question when there is no answer to it! And if there is an answer, it’s probably wrong. Comforting, but wrong. Wrong ideas have tremendous vitality, I’ve noticed. They’re sticky. They’re like sticky stuff people put their hands into, and then they can’t get it off, and they touch other people and it sticks to them too.”
"I'm not comforted," Philip said.
"You shouldn’t be comforted," she said. "But what people go through does not go unnoticed. Credit is given. There is such a thing as justice. I said it was a lottery everybody loses, but that’s just one way of looking at it. That’s oversimplifying."
She had to be an academic of some kind, this mystery lady. She had to be a history or philosophy professor, a professor of religion or law. She seemed to be a great many things, some sort of polymath. It was important to associate oneself with brainiacs. They could be important sources of guidance and wisdom despite their social disabilities. Wisdom wasn’t an element commonly found in the realm of public life, or, for that matter, in any realm of life. It was a rare element.
Philip felt ravished by her words and by her, yet she hadn’t laid a finger on him. They had not touched. He felt as though he’d exposed a true and tender part of himself to her. He felt that she had somehow induced him to do that, and now he felt a shiver, as though a cold breeze were slithering through an open window somewhere. But it was a pleasant shiver. It gave a thrill.
“I should stop yakking,” she said. "And you should probably rejoin your party. I wouldn't want people to start getting the wrong idea. I just stopped by to say hello."
"Will you come with me?" Philip asked. "I'd be glad to introduce you around."
"I'd love to, but I can't," she said. "I really just came to check in for a moment. I should get going."
"Philip!" came a voice from elsewhere, through the closed door. It was Sam's voice. "Phone!"
"I hate the phone," Philip said automatically. He cracked the door open. It was of course unlocked, since it had no lock. "Tell them I'll call them back, whoever it is!" he called to Sam through the crack. "I'm sorry, the telephone is such a terrible interrupter, isn't it, which is just one of the many reasons I hate it. I couldn't live without it, thought, without several, in fact," he said, turning back to the woman, who was gone.
Where had she gone? Had she slipped through the other door? There was no other door. Had she gone out the window? The window had been painted shut and hadn’t been usable in years. Once, at his mother’s bidding, he’d tried to free the sashes from the frame by slicing the paint with a razor blade, but he’d had no success. The window remained stubbornly shut, like the lips of a criminal determined not to tell his interrogators anything at all.
"It's Mom," Sam said. He had glided up to the door and was now standing on the threshold to the study. "Were you talking to yourself again in there?"
"It’s Mom?"
"She's down in the garden, grilling the burgers," Sam said. "She's on her cell. She needs more patties, more buns, more everything. You're elected. You're the bun-runner. I'm dealing with the desserts up here, and an influx of cheap wine at room temperature. How’s that for barbaric?"
"Your mom." He felt as if he’d just awakened and his head was still full of dream haze.
"You all right? Yeah, my mom," Sam said. "Who else? Did you find what you were looking for in there?"
"Was I looking for something?"
"I don't know. You sort of rushed there for a sec, and then the phone rang, and we have a burger crisis."
Philip looked at his watch, expecting to see that it was already past three o’clock, but it was just past 2:30. The watch was running; he saw the second hand sweeping smoothly along.
"I thought I saw somebody I knew, that's all," Philip said.
"Speaking of that, did you notice who just came in?" Sam said, lowering his voice slightly, lifting his chin and glancing in the direction of the foyer.
"Who?"
"Herself," Sam said. “Madame. Our very own iron lady.”
Sam meant the mayor, but Philip was silent. He wasn’t thinking about the mayor or the state of her hair or whether she could be defeated at the next election. He wasn’t thinking about whether he would run against her in that election. He’d already made up his mind that he would, so he could afford not to think about it for the moment. He was thinking, instead, of a woman in a steel-gray suit. But he would have to go greet the mayor, of course. He was the host.
"The patties are in a tray in the fridge, bottom right, next to the box of oranges," Sam said. "There are two bags of buns on the counter next to the stove. There's also a huge bottle of ketchup somewhere, that kind with the cap on the bottom. We might be out of mustard. Check the pantry."
“You’ll have to do it,” Philip said. “Or get somebody else. I have to go find her.” He meant the mayor, or whoever. He still had a few questions.
About the author:
Paul Reidinger is the author of several novels, including The Best Man, Good Boys, The City Kid and The Bad American as well as a memoir, Lions in the Garden, and Patchwork and Hipsters of the Civil War, collections of essays and criticism. He grew up in Wisconsin, was educated at Stanford University and the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and lives in San Francisco.
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