She was eating tuna and cucumber, he a rainbow roll with eel and salmon. His hair was especially kinky today, covering much of his face.
“Masonry is hard work,” he was saying. “But I love being outdoors all day in the summer. Selling Jags is actually harder work for me.”
“So quit.”
“I’d be a fool to quit a job where I make so much money.” He waved his hand in the air. “Ah. Everything is hard. In its own way.”
Larissa thought about her day, of sushi lunches and painting theater sets and ice cream and homework, and shopping, and slowness. A little baking, a little shopping, a little housework. Was that hard, too? In its own way?
Chewing her lip, she said nothing, glancing at his cracked young hands holding the chopsticks, as she listened to Yes on the radio, on low, but unmistakably serenading her about perpetual change…the world in their hands, the moon, the stars; the impending disaster gazing down on them, thought forward to April, to summer. What to do? It’s just a boy I see, an illusion in front of me…
“So what happened to your dad?”
Kai stiffened slightly. With a thin smile he turned his head to her. “Nah, I don’t want to talk about my dad, you know? We weren’t close, he was…Papa was a rolling stone. Every day I worry someone is going to walk through the dealership door and say he’s my half-brother. My old man was into some bad shit, and my mom and grandma raised us on their own. He disappeared; then I heard he went to jail for possession. A little while ago he popped around again. I was his only son.”
Larissa said nothing.
“He disappeared again, like a magic act. We figured he probably went back to his two wives, his three mistresses; that’s what my mother said. But we heard he was sick and in the hospital. Then he died. Left me the bike. I do love my bike.”
“I’m sorry he got sick,” Larissa said.
“That’s okay. People get sick. We have bodies, and our bodies aren’t perfect. Nothing is perfect. Even our souls aren’t perfect.”
So true. But still. “Did you get to see him before he died?”
Kai emitted a short laugh, an exhale. “For someone who didn’t want to talk about it, I sure am talking a lot about it.” He took a sip of Coke. “Yeah. My sisters and I went to the hospital to see him. Even my mother went.” He stopped. “The Catholic nun who did rounds carried a guitar with her along with the Bible, and once she came into my dad’s room and sat with us and asked if he wanted to hear something. Well, he couldn’t talk anymore, he was slipping in and out of consciousness, but Melissa, my older sister, said his favorite song when she was growing up was ‘King of the Road’. Do you know it? Roger Miller?”
Larissa shook her head.
And Kai sang it to her. Just a little, his head bobbing from side to side; it was a lilting melody, he carried a cheerful tune…”Two hours of pushing broom buys an eight-by-twelve four-bit room…” and then broke off and said, “Well, this nun chick, I’ve never heard anyone sing and play the guitar like her, not even Roger Miller. It was unbelievable. And my dad, even though he couldn’t speak, and the doctors said he couldn’t hear or see or understand anything anymore, he lay there, and you could almost swear his misty eyes were twitching in rhythm to the tune. My sisters said I was crazy. But he heard every word. The nun told me privately that the last thing to go on a man is his hearing; the dying hear everything, and I knew she was right. I asked her if she knew where he was headed because he hadn’t been a very good man, certainly not a good father, which is the thing that most affected me when I was younger, not having a dad. And do you know what she told me?”
Larissa twitched, misty-eyed herself, to the rhythm of Kai’s words. “No, what did she say?”
“She said, well, you say he’s no good, but look, all his kids are sitting here with him, and his ex-wife, your mother, was here with him. You’re angry for the way he treated her, but you’re here, and she is here. There are some people who die completely alone, no kids, no friends, nobody at the end of their life. So you know, maybe your old man wasn’t all bad.”
A short pause followed before Larissa breathed in and said, “Look at the time.” It was after two. They’d been sitting for over an hour.
Next day. That’s how she moved now. Lunch hour, from one to two Monday to Friday. Housewives and bikers, women and men, mothers and sons, actors and singers, salesmen, stonemasons, shoppers and sinners, lunch hour from one to two, all welcome.
“So where’s your mom now, your sisters?”
“Still in Hawaii.”
“Oh.” Why did that make her happy? Him being here without his family. “What are you doing in Jersey? Seems a long way to go to work at a car dealership.”
“Yeah. But a friend of mine moved out here from Maui. So I followed him.”
“Is that your mall buddy, Gil?”
“Yeah. And his roomie. They go to Rutgers, live in Maplewood. Initially I came to bunk with them till I got a gig. But it just so happened that I got a gig right away, so I got my own crib.”
“Where?” She didn’t mean to sound so high-pitched. But she felt high-pitched.
“A few blocks away.” He was calm in response. He was always calm. “I can walk to work.”
“Maplewood’s a nice town,” Larissa said, in a more even tone. It didn’t seem quite right for college kids. It was more a family town. Like Summit. “Your friends like it?”
Kai cleared his throat. “Unfortunately my buddy Gil was arrested a while back dealing dope on campus. So he’s temporarily out of commission.”
“For how long?”
“Three to seven. Chance of parole in eighteen months.”
“Geez. Three to seven seems steep.”
“I think,” said Kai, “it might not have been his first offense.”
“Oh.”
“The guy had to pay his tuition somehow. Parents got divorced and there were no funds to be had, and yet—well, you know how it is.”
Just thinking about how it was got Larissa all flushed, because Kai said, “Is this making you uncomfortable? The drugs? That’s not my scene.”
“No, I was just…the food went down wrong.” His age was supposed to be the liberating thing! The thing that made everything else so easy-peasy lemon-squeezy. Almost like sitting with one of her drama students, having a chat in the breeze. Why did thinking of his friends, dealing drugs to pay for their tuition, make her feel so twisted up inside? Could it be because her own college experience of dope and crazy protesting friends was twenty years ago? His lifetime ago.
“Madison is a great small town,” Kai said. “Don’t you think?”
She wasn’t sure. “Like Hawaii?”
“Nah. Too many transients in Hawaii. Too many vacationers. Nothing is permanent there. This good stable life is so strange. So exotic.”
“This life is exotic?” Larissa repeated in a flat tone. What was he talking about!
“Honestly, you’d be hard-pressed to find a town as quaint and cute as Madison. I’m not saying I want to live here forever. I want to see the world. But to settle down? To raise a family? There is no better place. Really.”
“If you say so. But it’s not exotic, Kai. It’s just not. It’s too normal to be exotic.”
“See, to me, the normal is the exotic.”
“Do you know what’s exotic? The Philippines. My best friend lives near Manila; she’s always asking me to go visit her.”
“Why don’t you?”
“Well, I can’t just pick up and go.”
“Why not?”
“What’s my family going to do?”
“Oh, they’ll manage for a few weeks, won’t they?”
“I don’t think they will.”
“Go,” Kai said. “Have you ever gone anywhere on your own?”
Larissa was actually scared to go. She didn’t know how to say that. She was scared of malaria, of dengue fever, of the horrid water; Che’s stories of never being able to drink the water without boiling it first filled her
with dread. That’s why the children couldn’t come with her. She was scared for their safety. And for her own, though she wouldn’t confess that to Kai, who didn’t seem the type to be easily spooked, riding around on a speed-demon bike and having friends who were in prison. Besides, her best friend lived in Manila and was not afflicted, other than with childlessness, so it may have been in Larissa’s head. But then, much of life was in her head. Didn’t make it any less real.
Time to go.
Next.
Next.
Next.
Why did she sit? She didn’t know. All she knew was that she sat with him for a few fine merry moments, and then it was over. Which was a good way to describe many things you did that didn’t involve routine or work. For a few fine moments, Maggie painted, Emily played volleyball, Evelyn sipped her wine and read her books, Tara walked and complained. Jared played basketball with Asher in the front drive. Ezra read tomes on existential materialism. Larissa dreamed of the joyous moments of a spring play from high school, intoning, “I do love nothing in the world so well as you. Is not that strange?” Except all those other things didn’t involve pushing open the closed door that in red block letters said, DANGER: LIVE ELECTRIC CURRENT. ENTER AT OWN RISK.
4
Waiting for Godot
“You don’t do theater anymore?”
“What makes you say that? I do. I just…” Larissa broke off. “I do.” Just not like before. “I was director of the theater department at a private school in Hoboken for many years.”
He grunted. “Many years, you don’t say.”
Oh, why, why did she have to say many. Since when did hated pride come before puffed-up vanity? She’d rather be young and talentless than impress him with how many long years she’d been director of a theater department at a school where he could’ve tried out for a school play. “I once belonged to a theater troupe called The Great Swamp Revue. We were excellent.” When he chuckled, she, encouraged, asked, “Are you interested in theater?”
“Nah,” he said. “I was always more of a music guy.”
“Music, really?” Mental note to thyself: less about self and theater. Nothing more tedious than a woman basking in the deluded glory of former theater days, convinced she is the center of the universe.
“What, you don’t believe me?”
“Of course I do. What do you play?”
“A little of everything. Guitar. Harmonica. Drums. In Hawaii every boy plays the ukulele, so I did too. So how come you don’t do theater anymore? No time?”
She nodded; indeed there was no time. “I barely have time to paint the sets these days.”
“You went from director to set decorator?”
“Less stress,” she said almost without a beat.
He smiled. “Kids seem like a lot of stress to me.”
This was where the whole thing became so bogus. You just knew it was bogus.
“Hey,” he said suddenly, “ever been on a bike?”
“What, a bicycle?” A bicycle built for two. “Sure, who hasn’t? Many times. You?”
He laughed. “Are you being funny?”
She didn’t know. She didn’t know if she was being funny.
He pointed out of her Jag to his Ducati. “I brought my bike today. Want to go for a ride?”
Larissa couldn’t remember the last time she became this flustered. Not looking at him, hemming, hawing, she said, “No, thank you, but, uh, maybe another time. Seems too cold anyway. Well, it actually is cold. Windy. I don’t know how you do it, I mean, it must be even colder on the bike. And look at the breeze, it’s nippy. It’s like a squall.” Her cheeks were burning as she ruffled her napkins, stuffing them into the brown bag. “Maggie, my friend,” she said, just throwing it out there, “is taking me to lunch tomorrow.”
“The curly one from the mall?” Kai opened the car door and got out, leaning in. “You two have fun.” His face was smiling at her, his small brown eyes dancing, his kinky hair blowing about; he had a manner about him of boyish sweetness, of youthful pride, of innocent joy when he said, “There’s nothing like being on a bike, going fast. You sure you don’t want a spin?”
She shook her head mutely.
She tried to think of something that might be like being on a Ducati going fast, in spring, with the wind in her hair, but couldn’t.
On Thursday Kai wasn’t at Stop&Shop. One o’clock, 1:30. She bought paper towels and cereal, wandered the aisles, paid, sat in the car until two.
Friday he wasn’t there either. Larissa didn’t know what to make of it.
One thing for sure, whatever she couldn’t make of it, she spent all weekend not making anything of it. Every conscious minute, she spent getting her mind away from it.
The school report cards arrived in the mail. They weren’t good. Emily’s was okay, but Asher was doing dismally in English, and Michelangelo couldn’t spell. Larissa pretended to deal with it, and on Saturday night she and Jared went over to Maggie and Ezra’s for dinner and games, and the only person who noticed that things were not all square with her was Ezra, who said, to no one in particular, “Boy, is Lar ever in her own world. What are you thinking, Lar? Illuminate us.”
“I’m fine, Ezra. What do you mean?”
“Are you thinking of accepting the job? Because Leroy wants to stage Waiting for Godot for the spring play. I’m going to shoot myself.”
“Waiting for Godot, good play. Good choice,” Larissa said.
“A nihilist two-person play? For spring!” shouted an aggrieved Ezra.
She came out of it a little. “Uh, no, it’s terrible. Impossible. Put your foot down, tell him he can’t.”
“What’s wrong with you? Why would you say it’s a good idea?”
“How was your doctor’s appointment?” asked Maggie. “I forgot to ask on Wednesday.”
“What doctor’s appointment?”
“Yeah, what doctor’s appointment?” asked Jared. He was shuffling cards, trying to teach them how to play blackjack since they were planning a trip to Atlantic City for Memorial Day weekend. But it wasn’t taking. They were readers, not mathematicians.
“She went to the doctor on Tuesday,” Maggie said.
“She did?” Jared glanced at Larissa. “You did?”
“I’m fine,” she said. “Just the dermatologist.”
“Ooooh!” said Maggie. “Dermatologist. Lar is getting Botox! No wonder she looks to be in the first flush of youth.”
“Do I?” Larissa asked quietly.
“No wonder you kept asking me how young you looked. Now I know your secret. How much does he charge?”
“No Botox, Mags, sorry,” Larissa said, “just a routine checkup of moles and things.”
They discussed this for an inordinately long time. Moles and cancers, what they were supposed to look like, what they morphed into, the signs of danger, where the moles appeared, the suddenness and yet the inevitability of bad news coming upon you (that was Ezra—of course!) and then what you did with that bad news. Now no one wanted to play cards anymore. Everybody knew someone who had melanoma on their back, basal cell on their face, squamous cell on their arms.
The irony of this conversation did not go unremarked upon by Jared, who in the car on the way home said, “Larissa, you didn’t think that was odd, talking about moles at such excruciating length?”
“No, why? Did you?”
He coughed. “You and I both know you haven’t got a single blemish on that body of yours, not a single mark of any kind, not even a childhood scar!” Jared chuckled. “Waxing all poetic about non-existent moles. You’re hilarious. So why’d you blow Maggie off?”
She chuckled too, sheepishly. He leaned over and kissed her at the red light. “You’re so funny. Why don’t you just tell her you don’t want to hang out all the time? Tell her you’re reading. It wouldn’t even be a lie. You are actually reading nowadays.”
“Yes.” Larissa’s gaze focused on the road.
Saturday passed and Sunday too, an
d then Monday came, and she drove her Jag to Stop&Shop.
Kai wasn’t there. Not there on Monday, his day off from work, when he always showed up and they did their weekly shopping together.
Larissa didn’t know what to think. She hung around thirty minutes on Monday, ten on Tuesday, and then Wednesday morning came and she looked at herself in the hall mirror, at her straight highlighted hair, her sensible brown eyes, her long arms, slender fingers, her body, trim from walking, from downward-dog yoga poses, everything still slim, still in proportion. She thought about a manicure with Fran, maybe a mommy-and-daughter day in the city with Emily, just the girls. She thought about organizing a fundraiser for the spring play, she thought ahead to planning the Hawaii trip in August and whether they should take an extra day for Memorial Day Atlantic City weekend.
Larissa thought of writing to Che, telling her she’d been eating kinilaw for two months, and she ruminated on packing up all her winter sweaters and taking out her summer shirts. But what she really contemplated was never ever ever going to Stop&Shop again, and the knot inside her for a brief moment was untied and loose of anxiety, like dangling threads. Clear of everything.
She would go back to King’s. Sure it was crowded and the aisles were narrow, and the parking lot was tiny, but her leg wasn’t broken anymore, and to celebrate, she got on the treadmill for thirty minutes and watched a talk show and then showered, and cleaned her bedroom, and got dressed, and made coffee and sat in the kitchen for five minutes, ten minutes, planning dinner and vacation, with Love’s Labors Lost opened to the page that said, The blood of youth burns not with such excess as gravity’s revolt to wantonness. And in her head, brutal words swirled about like blood-on-snow candy canes. What are you doing here? What do you want? Is it music? We can play music. But you want more. You want something and someone new. You want ecstasy.
She bolted from the island, got into her car and drove to Stop&Shop.
He wasn’t there.
This time Larissa waited an hour, as if saying goodbye. She sat in the parking lot, overlooking the graveyard, eating sushi and listening to Chet Baker singing “These Foolish Things” that made his heart a dancer, and wondered about spring, and whether she needed new shoes, new sandals, perhaps. A girl always needed new sandals for spring. At two she drove to pick up Michelangelo, and sat quietly in the parking lot at her son’s school. So close to the end, to the beginning. So close to the middle, which implied just as much ahead as there had been behind. And yet close to absolutely nothing.