Open House

  “Should we do it here? Or should we go and make out in the car with the heater turned up?” I am quite pleased with my forwardness. This is really very good for me. I need to do more of this, yes, I do.

  “Why don’t I get the check,” he says.

  Oh, he’s paying. What a wonderful, wonderful man. So . . . Gregory Peckish. I feel for my shoes, slide into them, and then stand, only a bit unsteadily. “I’ll just go to the bathroom,” I tell him.

  I should have said “powder room.” That would evoke the image of me sitting before a beautiful gold mirror, a vase of fresh flowers nearby, freshening my makeup, rather than sitting on a toilet. “Just want to powder my nose,” I add, lightly touching his shoulder as I pass by him. There. All fixed. See? Life is easy. Full of choices and quick remedies, if only you look. There’s no reason in the world to mourn one relationship when another is so easy to find. Why, Jonathan is reading the same book as I am!

  After I use the toilet, I stand before the mirror, put on lipstick, then blot it. I arrange my hair with my fingers, pull down on a strand to make it rest near one eye. I put on a little more eyeliner. Then a touch more blush.

  I have always been a champion kisser, and I have a feeling Jonathan is, too. I can’t wait to get back to him. I am a woman in my forties, and I know what’s up. I can do whatever I want. I take in a deep breath, straighten my belt, head back to the table. This urge is growing stronger and stronger. Well, good. It’s good. I’d thought I was broken. I’m not broken. I am an attractive woman, out with my new friend Jonathan, who is a very attractive man. My mother is quite good at this fixing-up business, I will thank her; yes, I will send her a pretty little bouquet and on the card will be “Thanks.”

  No. More.

  On the card will be, “You were absolutely right.”

  No. Not that much.

  Well, something will be on the card to tell my mother what a good matchmaker she turned out to be. Maybe I’ll call Stuart Gardner, that guy who called before, the other one my mother recommended. Maybe I’ll just be a dating fool, have a stable of studs. A blond, a brunet, and a redhead. None of them with male-pattern baldness. None of them on Viagra.

  When I arrive back at the table, Jonathan looks up at me. “Ready?”

  “Oh, yes,” I say. “Yup.”

  OF COURSE we do not make out in the car. We make out in his bed. I am in my forties and so is he, and we have admitted to each other that we have in our lifetimes had our share of back trouble. And so here I am lying on the bottom, and here he is lying on the top, and he is kissing me and I could not be more content. On the weekends when David has Travis, I will live here, and Jonathan will bring me champagne when I lounge in the tub after we make love. He will bring me champagne with a strawberry floating in it, and he will read to me from a book of poetry by Pablo Neruda.

  He unzips my dress and I panic for a moment, wondering about the state of my bra; then remember that it’s a push-up, a nice one, and I am eager for him to see it. It’s got lots of lace.

  I feel him pulling my dress down slightly. Then he stops, kisses my neck to make for a pleasingly painful pause. The man is a master. I should pay him.

  He pulls my dress down farther, kisses my collarbones, moves down, stops just above my breasts. I pull lightly on his hair, inadvertently moan. He pulls my dress down to my waist and kisses my breasts through my bra. And now, finally, there are his smart fingers undoing my bra and his mouth at last on my bare skin. He runs his hand up my thigh, and I think I might burst with lust. And then, somehow, my bra is over my face, the underwire poking into my right eye.

  “Hold on,” I say, laughing, and start to pull away.

  “Oh, no,” he groans.“Don’t.”

  “No, I just want to . . . wait a second.” What I’ll do is just take everything off. Well, maybe not everything. No. Everything.

  But he is squeezing me tightly, holding me down, kissing me harder than before. It is not entirely unpleasant. But then, suddenly, it is.

  “Jonathan,” I say. “Wait a minute!”

  He pulls back, his eyes narrowed. “What the fuck is this? You want it just as much as I do.”

  I breathe out an astonished laugh, feel myself descend with a lurch into instant sobriety. “I just . . .”

  “Forget it. The hell with it.” He sits up at the edge of the bed, turns on the light. I regret that his clothes are still on, while I am in a state of undress that is sexy no more. No, not anymore. I pull down my bra, fasten it, sit up, and pull my dress onto my shoulders. With some difficulty, I zip it.

  Jonathan takes one sharp look at me, then looks away. He pulls a pack of cigarettes out of the bedside-stand drawer, lights one.

  “You smoke?” I say, and the whole, whole card house falls down, down, down.

  OUTSIDE, I LOOK up at the night sky, blink back tears. It’s too cold to cry. It’s clear, the moon full, the stars like pinholes in black velvet. On the lawns I walk past are the reaching patterns of moon shadows, cast by the bare limbs of trees. I walk carefully, slipping often. “Goddamn men,” I say, out loud. “They’re all pigs. All of them.”

  But Travis. He won’t be a pig. I’ll make sure of it. I may not ever contribute much to this world, but the one thing I will do is make sure Travis is a gentleman. A gentle man. I am going to start paying very, very close attention to him, and shape him so that he will come out like a gay man, but be straight. Unless of course he wants to be gay. But it doesn’t look good for that. Signs of inattentiveness and carelessness abound.

  I slip again, and this time fall gracelessly onto my side. My purse slides a few feet ahead of me, then stops as though it is looking back, playing a game. I start to get up, but then instead turn onto my back. It’s not so bad, here on the sidewalk. It’s restful. I move my arms and legs, checking for pain. Nothing terribly wrong—nothing broken, anyway. The door to a nearby house opens. I see a yellow rectangle of light, then the silhouette of a woman in a bathrobe leaning out. “Hello?” she calls. “Are you all right? Miss?”

  I struggle to my feet. “I’m fine,” I say. Liar. “I just fell.”

  “I saw. My goodness!”

  “Well, it’s slippery, you know! You’d fall too, if you were out here wearing three-inch heels!”

  The woman closes the door.

  Oh, I hadn’t meant to sound so defensive. I should have been nicer, asked the woman to use her phone to call a cab. I brush snow off my coat—funny, I’m not so cold now—and continue walking.

  A car slows down, and I quicken my step. It is Jonathan, come to beg forgiveness. Well, he is not forgiven. Then the car pulls over, and I see that it is not Jonathan, it is a bunch of teenage boys. The window rolls down and the boy riding shotgun leans out, starts to say something. Then, seeing me more clearly, he says nothing, rolls the window back up, and the car drives away.

  Pigs.

  When I finally arrive home, I let myself in the back door, go into the kitchen, and upend the vase of roses Jonathan brought me into the garbage. Red for romance. Right.

  “Hello?” King calls. He comes into the kitchen and leans against the doorjamb, watching me. I rinse the vase out, shove it back into the cupboard.

  “Didn’t go so well, huh?”

  “Ha!” I fling wet hair off my face, kick off my heels.

  “What happened?”

  “Well. For one thing, I ended up walking home.”

  “Really!”

  “Yes, that’s right. I walked home. And let me tell you, that was the best part of the evening.”

  “You walked all the way home from the restaurant?”

  I look up from unbuttoning my coat. “Yes! Well . . . No. It was . . . from his apartment, all right? It was from there. But it was still far!”

  “What happened, Sam?”

  I burst into tears. And when King comes toward me, I hold up my stained evening bag to keep him away. “No,” I say. “Don’t.” I weep silently for a moment, then stop suddenly and say, “I am sorry to tell
you this, King, because you’re a man. But men are assholes. Every single one of you. This can never change.”

  “Well. Not every one of us.”

  “Yes, you are. I’m sorry. But, yes, you are.”

  “You must be freezing. Go change out of those clothes. Then come down here and I’ll make you some tea.”

  “I don’t want any tea. And I don’t believe I want to talk. Thank you for baby-sitting. I mean, I’m grateful. I am. But I do not want to talk to you.”

  He shrugs. “Okay.” He starts for the closet and his coat.

  I regret myself instantly; King has never been anything but kind to me; none of this is his fault. “Wait,” I say. “I’m sorry. Don’t leave. I’ll go change.”

  In my bedroom, I throw my dress on the floor, then kick it into the corner. I pull out a pair of jeans and a faded blue sweatshirt from my dresser drawer, start to put them on, then throw them on the floor as well. From another drawer, I pull out plaid flannel pajama bottoms and a long-sleeved T-shirt. I change into them, add thick socks and my old, battered terry-cloth robe. In the bathroom, I take off my makeup and contacts, and put my glasses on.

  On my way back downstairs, I peek into Travis’s bedroom, then tiptoe in to watch him sleep. I want to kiss his forehead; and I want to wake him up and say fiercely between my teeth, “Listen, buster, don’t you ever treat a woman the way I was treated tonight!” I do neither; instead, I stand beside him, cotton-headed, realizing the alcohol hasn’t quite worn off yet.

  In the family room, a grainy black-and-white movie is on TV. A dinosaur is shaking a skyscraper around in his mouth, his eyes rolling unconvincingly from side to side. People cling to the side of the building like ticks. When King sees me, he turns off the television, folds his hands over his stomach. Waits.

  “I think this was date rape,” I say, finally. “Almost.”

  He starts to say something, then stops.

  “I mean it!”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Well, what did I expect? This is what always happens, one way or another.”

  “Come on, Sam. It’s not what always happens. You know that.”

  I stand still for a moment, wondering if I have enough energy for a good debate. He reaches forward, pulls my glasses off my face, and polishes them with his sweatshirt. “You can’t even see,” he tells me.

  “Can too.” I watch as he rubs the glasses, holds them up to the light, rubs them again, and then places them carefully back on. The gesture is so tender it makes me start crying again, for all that is not tender in the world.

  “Was Travis good?” I ask, finally, through my tears.

  “Yeah,” King says gently. “Travis was fine.” And then, “You know, I’ve never been too good at fighting, but I could go over there and sit on the guy for you. Where’s he live?”

  “That would be great,” I say, laughing, imagining the scene. The elegant Jonathan would be flattened cartoonlike beneath King.

  Then I stop laughing, feel the tail end of my drunkenness wash over me like a mild flu. I realize I am not particularly capable of anything. “King?” I say. “Could you just stay here for a while, just until . . .”

  “Yeah, sure.”

  “Okay. Good.”

  The phone rings. “Who’s calling so late?” I say, and then, of course, know. “It’s him, the bastard.” I glare at the phone.

  King picks it up, says hello. Then, “Yes, she’s here.” He looks over at me. “Do you want to—”

  “No!”

  “She’d rather not,” King says. Then, turning slightly away from me, “Probably you shouldn’t call her anymore. That’d be my advice.” A pause, and then, “A friend. I’m her friend.”

  I feel a rush of feeling start in my center and then spread until I can feel it in my fingertips, in my toes. Safety, is what it is. And the blanketlike relief of it is awesome.

  “YOU WALKED HOME?” Rita asks, later that night.

  “Well, it wasn’t that far. A couple of miles.” Now that I have the outraged sympathy I was looking for, I can feign nonchalance.

  “It’s winter! You were wearing heels!”

  “It’s not winter yet. It’s still November.”

  “It’s always winter in Massachusetts. Except when it’s August and then it’s hell.”

  “I didn’t have a choice. I had to get out of there fast.”

  “Was he really that bad?” Rita asks. “Maybe he was just frustrated. Maybe he thought you were teasing him.”

  “No, he was that bad. It wasn’t just nasty. It was scary.”

  “Well, don’t go out with him anymore.”

  I hold the phone away from myself, look at it. Don’t go out with him anymore. Great advice. Gee, and I was going to call him tomorrow, ask him to come over and maybe hold a knife to my throat.

  “I’ll talk to you tomorrow, Rita. I’m going to sleep.”

  “Wait, listen, I was thinking about coming out there. How would that be?”

  “It would be great, what do you think? I’d love to have you come out here! When?”

  “Next week, I thought. Right after Thanksgiving. I’ll come on Saturday, leave the next Saturday.”

  “A week?”

  “Yeah. Why, do you think that’s too long?”

  “No! Well . . . yes. But no.”

  “Don’t worry. I’ll be helpful. I’ll fold all the socks. I’ll chop the onions for dinner. I’ll help you find a new roommate.”

  “Ugh. Don’t remind me.”

  “Maybe you’ll get someone better.”

  “Nobody would be better than Lydia. You’ll see.”

  After I hang up the phone, I stare at the ceiling, thinking. Rita hasn’t visited for a long time. Last time she was here, Travis didn’t have any front teeth. Now he doesn’t have a father, and his mother dates sociopaths.

  And yet.

  I turn off the bedside lamp, realize that nothing hurts. I take in a deep breath, as though the inhaled air will check around and let me know if that’s really true. It is.

  15

  “MOSTLY, YOU ONLY MAKE A CHANGE,” THE BALDING CHINESE man tells me. I stare at him for a moment, uncomprehending, wondering if perhaps he is offering advice, then realize he is talking about money: I am to make change.

  It is nine o’clock Monday morning, and Mr. Lee is orienting me to my job at the Laundromat, leading me down a long aisle of square white washers. Gigantic dryers line one wall, round glass openings like portholes. A solitary figure, a thin, older man, stands folding at a waist-high table. His movements are slow and deliberate, graceful. He is matching exactly the corners of the thin, striped towels he pulls from the metal laundry basket.

  “And also you make sure”—Mr. Lee turns to me, shaking his finger in my face—“no one steal! They try steal carts, dials from washer, who knows? Steal anything, you not watch!” He resumes walking again, and I meekly follow. He is wearing neatly pressed tan pants that end just above the heels of his Nike sneakers, and a light blue shirt with the sleeves rolled back. He has gray metal bifocals and a hearing aid that occasionally emits a high, squealing sound which Mr. Lee angrily adjusts—stopping in his tracks, grimacing, looking upward, and muttering.

  “Also you clean up little bit,” he says. He smiles at me, revealing small, tea-colored teeth. His voice is softer now, kind. “People throw trash, forget. You keep nice, people want come in, do wash! Okay? Okay?”

  “Yes,” I say. “That’s fine.”

  “You bring laundry?” the man asks.

  “Pardon?”

  “You bring laundry?”

  “Did I bring laundry?”

  “Yeah-yeah!”

  “No, I . . . I have a machine at home.”

  He turns away, heads for the little office in the back of the room. “Too bad. Fringe benefit. Do laundry.”

  “Oh. Well, that’s nice. Maybe tomorrow.”

  I follow him into the office, hang my jacket on the coat tree after Mr. Lee removes his. He points to a
n old wooden desk. “You sit here. Shut door.” Pointing next to a small, square hole in the wall that is located above the desk, he says, “All business through window. Not let customers in office! Business only through window. Professional! You keep door locked.” He hands me a set of keys. “You go home, you give keys afternoon person, come at two.”

  For a moment, I am frightened, wondering why Mr. Lee is so adamant about keeping the door locked. Is there that much money in the office? Are there robbery attempts here? I’m glad I’m on the early shift. Probably most criminals like to sleep late.

  He opens a desk drawer, shows me a bag of Hershey’s Kisses. “You like candy, huh?”

  “Well . . . yes. Sure.”

  “Aha! I think so, first time I see you. Detective! Candy fringe benefit.”

  Next he shows me large plastic containers of quarters and dimes, a tray for paper money. “For make change!” he says, and then, narrowing his eyes suspiciously, “You know how?”

  “To make change?” I ask. “Yes.”

  He smiles widely, a flash of gold. “Some people, don’t know how. Dumb.”

  “I see.”

  “Okay!” he says, zipping up his jacket. “Other Laundromats now. I got more, go check.” He opens his wallet, hands a small white card to me. “You have question, you call. You get my wife, she tell you what.”

  “Yes, all right. So, just to . . . let me just make sure, here. I make change, and clean up, is that right? And then at two o’clock the afternoon person will come. He will come, won’t he? I have to be home for my son when he gets back from school.”

  “He come, he come!” Mr. Lee says impatiently. “Steven. He come, all the time. Never miss!”

  “Okay,” I say. “Just checking.”

  He is almost out the door when he turns back to yell at me, “No dye! No one using dye!”

  “Right,” I say. “The signs say so.”

  “Not enough!” he says. “You watch!”

  “I will.”

  He gets into an older model white Cadillac. He can hardly see over the top of the steering wheel, yet the car suits him. I sit down at the desk, open the newspaper, pour a cup of coffee from the thermos I’ve brought. I hear a sound and, looking up, see the older man who had been folding laundry standing in the window before me. “Change for a dollar?” he asks. He has a thick Southern accent.