I laugh. “No.”
“You know what a naked star is?”
I think for a minute. And then, I can’t help it, I say, “One that just got out of a meteor shower?”
“Very funny. But what they are, are stars with most of their gaseous atmospheres stripped away. And you know why they’re revealed like that? Because of close encounters with other stars. I find something very human about that. Don’t you?”
I nod. Smile.
“I see that kind of thing all the time. It’s thrilling to me. And at the same time, there’s a kind of peace there, in that kind of contemplation, that you don’t get in relationships. At least, I don’t think you do.”
“Why did you stop?” I ask.
“Stop what?”
“Working at it.”
“Oh, I haven’t. Not at all.”
“But you … you know, your job isn’t exactly astrophysics.”
He sits back, looks at me. “Do you ever think about how hard it is to say something and have it be precise? Especially the things you care most about? You hear the words coming out of you and they are just not quite what you intended. You mean red, you’re thinking red, and then out of your mouth comes … chartreuse. And you want to take it back, but then the other person is saying, ‘Oh, chartreuse, I see,’ and it’s too late. It’s gone. I don’t know that in human relationships you ever find the true crossing from here to there. But in physics, it feels like you’re getting there.”
“But—”
He holds up a finger. “I don’t work in it because when I’m away from it in the specific, I’m better able to see it generally. Do you understand?”
I think I do understand. But it’s too hard to say how. It’s an internal acknowledgment, a yearning kind of stepping forward that will not translate itself into any words that I know. He’s right, about the limitations of words. And so I say simply, “I do understand.”
He looks at my plate. “Are you finished?”
“Yes, thank you, it was delicious.” And it was. Rosemary chicken, garlic mashed potatoes, corn on the cob, sweet peas. A chocolate cake he’d made. From scratch, of course. “Buttermilk’s the secret here,” he told me. “And you put a little coffee in the batter.”
He takes our plates, puts them in the sink, runs water on them. I sit in my chair and watch him, his slow and careful movements, his obvious contentment. There is a low buzz to the overhead light, and the sound is comforting. I want to stand close behind him, lay my head in the shallow valley between his shoulder blades. Instead, I drink more wine.
“Would you like to go into the living room?” he asks, when he has finished rinsing the dishes. A shy formality.
“Yes.” He gets his wine, and I follow him into the living room.
“Sit anywhere,” he says.
I choose the chair, and he sits at the end of the sofa nearest it. “You know, the thing about the jobs I do … A lot of people think I’m lazy.”
I say nothing. This had occurred to me.
“But I want … time. That’s why I walk dogs. I don’t want to keep on moving up the ladder, trading in one car for another. I want to be appreciative of all that’s here, in a normal life. I want to keep finding out about the things I see around me.” He leans forward, looks at me intently. “How do birds know how to fly south?”
“I don’t know!”
“Yeah, most people don’t. Why don’t you know?”
“Well, I just … I guess I just take some things for granted.”
“But, Sam, listen to this: They have internal compasses, sensitive to the earth’s magnetic field. They calibrate them by sunlight and by the stars. Think of that! Next time you see a bird fly by, think of that! They’re everywhere, Sam, these wonders. Do you remember the last time you really wanted to know everything?”
The answer comes to me like a movie in my head. I am flatchested and pigtailed, bending over the edge of a lake and watching the lacelike line of froth advance and recede, trying to determine what makes the water green. The sun is warm on my back. I am entirely unself-conscious—my body is a sack of flesh and bones whose function is to take me where I want to go. On my dresser at home, I have rocks and various kinds of leaves, a jar with a cocoon inside that I inspect a thousand times a day. I am obsessed with discovering things, as though I’ve been let out of the hatch of a spaceship and told to come back with a full report. For some time, I have nourished a fantasy that a small group of very wise people dressed in close-fitting silver will show up in the middle of my geography class, saying, “We’ve come for Samantha.” And I believe I will rise and follow them, leaving behind forever the lunchbox I am embarrassed about because Veronica always buys the wrong one.
“I do remember when I felt like that,” I say. “I was young. A little girl. But strong! I was so busy. And then I woke up one morning feeling clumsy and worried to death about which shade of lipstick to wear. And then I woke up the next morning and I was married. And then in labor. And then I had the job of caring for a family, which satisfied me—which is a sin now—but which satisfied me because it seemed to be about everything.”
“You were happily walking dogs, so to speak.”
“Yes. Yes.” I think for a moment, then say, “So … you aren’t expecting anything, are you?”
“I’m just watching the show,” he says. “I think it’s so good. I don’t know why people walk out on it in all the ways they do.”
I kick my shoes off, pull my feet up under me. “Einstein didn’t wear socks.”
“I know.”
“That’s all I know about physics.”
“That’s almost enough.”
“Oh, God, King. You always make me feel so … Like I’m fine.”
“That’s because you are, Sam. How come you don’t know that?”
I am embarrassed by a sudden rush of tears. I wipe them quickly away, then laugh at myself. “Oh, jeez, look at this.”
“Maybe we should go out,” he says gently. “Want to see a movie?”
I nod. I felt it too, a sense that if we took one step further in this direction, we would fall off a cliff together. And I don’t know, I still feel made of glass.
28
“Construction?” I say. “You’re kidding!”
“No, I’m not,” Stacy, the woman at the employment agency, tells me. “They’re desperate, and I can’t find anyone else. It’s easy work, the guy says; he says anyone can do it. And it pays well.”
“But I don’t know anything about construction!”
“You don’t have to. He’ll show you what you need to do. You just put on some old clothes, bring some gloves, and he’ll take care of the rest. You want the job?”
“Well … Yes.”
Stacy tells me the address of the job site, and I go upstairs to change. Bib overalls. A flannel shirt. A ponytail. My hiking boots. All of a sudden, I feel cool.
Mark Quinton is killer handsome. The kind of guy who should be posing for calendar pictures for women’s fantasies. He’s up on a ladder wearing work boots, jeans, a tool belt, and a white T-shirt with Quinton Construction Company written beneath a picture of a circular saw. He looks down at me when I come into the room, smiles. “Can I help you?”
“I’m here from the agency. Sam Morrow?”
“You’re Sam?”
“Yes.”
“I thought you were a man.”
“No, I … It’s Samantha. Did you need a man?”
“No, it doesn’t make any difference. Glad to have you.” He climbs down from the ladder, comes over to shake my hand. “My partner is sick today, and I’m way behind on this job.”
“I have to tell you, I don’t know anything about construction.”
“Ever used a hammer?”
“Well, sure.”
“Then you know something about construction.”
I look around the room. Thick sheets of plastic for a roof and walls. Sawhorses, a circular saw resting on one of them. Stacks of lumber, bo
xes of ceramic tile. Huge quantities of long nails. Large pieces of plywood. Piles of sawdust, a space heater that’s doing a great job keeping the place warm. “So. What do you want me to do?”
“First thing is a coffee break,” Mark says. “You like cranberry muffins?”
“Yes, I do.”
He opens a bag, spreads out a napkin on boards over a sawhorse, sets out two muffins. Then he opens a thermos and pours two cups of coffee into paper cups. “It’s got milk in it,” he says. “That’s what me and my partner like.”
“That’s fine.”
“No sugar.”
“Perfect.”
“What we’re doing is a kitchen/family room,” he says. “And what I’m working on today is the roof and the window frames. I need you to take a shitload of nails out of some plywood that I’m going to reuse on the roof. That’ll be the first thing. Okay?”
“Fine.”
“Then I’ll need you to take my truck and run an errand. Go down to the lumberyard and pick up some supplies. You just tell them my name, and they’ll load you up.”
“Okay.” I finish my muffin in two huge bites, gulp down the coffee. “I’m ready.”
“You’re going to work out fine,” Mark says, grinning. He turns on a radio splattered with paint. “You like country and western?”
“Uh-huh.”
“You got to hear country and western when you’re working construction.”
I watch as he shows me how to take the nails out: hammer on the pointed ends until they’re almost all the way out; then turn the board over and pry them out by the heads. Put them in the plastic bucket—save them.
I work on this for two hours, then say I’m finished. He comes down, looks at the boards that I’ve stacked neatly in the corner. “Good.” He looks at me, nods. “Come over here, I’ll teach you to build a header. That’s what goes along the top of the window, to support the weight of the roof.”
He lays out two boards of uneven length, tells me to align them at one end, then nail them together. “Here, and here,” he says, indicating where the nails should go. “Avoid the knotholes.” I look around nervously. “Are the owners here?”
“Shit, no. Ain’t nobody home anymore. People hire me to do these beautiful things to their houses and then they’re never in them.” He hands me a nail. “This is a tenpenny bright,” he says. “Drive it, girl.”
I place the nail, tap tentatively at it.
“Use your shoulder,” Mark says. “Get your weight into your swing. And stand off to the side a little.”
I do as he tells me and the nail makes its way a good third of the way in. I look up, a little thrilled.
“That’s right,” he says.
I pound again. It feels so good.
“Sink it!” Mark says, and I do.
“I’m not going to tell you what I was thinking while I did that,” I say, straightening, my hands on my hips.
“You don’t have to,” he says, and hands me another nail.
It was nothing about David, what I was thinking. It was about me. I was thinking, “I! Am! Worth! Something!”
Mark climbs the ladder, and I finish nailing the boards together. When I’m through, he looks down and says, “See that? You just built a header.”
I take a breath. Nod. Nod again.
“Now go and get the keys to my truck, they’re in my jacket,” Mark says. “Then go to National Lumber—you know where it is?”
I do know. I’ve driven past it many times, and I tell Mark this.
“All right. Go on over there and tell them you need what I called about this morning. And then we’ll have lunch.”
“Burger King?” I say.
“Is that what you like?”
“I thought that’s what you guys ate all the time.”
“I like those tofu roll-ups,” Mark says. “But I could do a Whopper.”
We sit at a small table by the window at Burger King. Mark is telling me about the time he got kicked out of his Catholic school for falling in love with a nun.
“Are you serious?” I ask.
He nods. “She was real young. And I saw one day that there were all these little hairs escaping from her wimple. I thought, whoa! that’s a woman under there! Before that, I thought they … I didn’t really think they were women. I thought they were a kind of separate species.”
“So you saw her hair and fell in love?”
“Well, not right away. What happened was, I was a pretty good artist. And she used to take me outside, up on a hill, and let me draw. And she would just sit with me, read, sometimes she’d read out loud, it was nice. And then one day we started holding hands, hugging a little.” He shrugs. “Kissin’ … Anyway, somebody saw us and I got expelled and she got fired. Never saw her again.”
“How old were you?” I ask.
“Twelve.”
“Twelve!”
He takes a sip of his Coke. “Yup. I got a son coming up on twelve now. I look at him sometimes, you know? He doesn’t tell me anything anymore.”
“I know,” I say. “They stop.”
“Right around ten, they start getting pretty quiet.”
“It’s true.”
“Makes you kind of miss the days when they ran around with their pacifiers, their little tummies hanging over their diapers. ’Member that? Those little belly buttons?”
I smile at him. What a good man.
Mark crumples up his bag. “Ready to go back to work?”
“Yeah.” In the truck on the way back, I look at my hands. Two blisters starting. I couldn’t be more proud.
29
“I can’t do this stupid homework,” Travis says. “I hate Mr. Houseman. He’s stupid!”
“Let me see,” I say, and stop peeling potatoes. At the kitchen table, Travis is holding his forehead in his hands, his usual way of conveying anguish.
He looks up at me, frowns. “You’re no good in math!”
“Well, just let me see. And for your information, I got an A in algebra.”
“This is not that,” he says.
And it isn’t. I don’t quite understand what it is. Something close to geometry, though, and I still remember taking my geometry midterm when I was a sophomore in high school. I passed the time by drawing designs for evening gowns on the back of the exam; everything on the front of the page only annoyed me.
“I’m afraid you’re failing this class,” my teacher had told me later, sadly. He was speaking in a very quiet voice. A whisper, really.
“I know,” I had whispered back.
“Why don’t you come in after school a few times a week? I’ll give you a little extra help.”
“Okay,” I’d said, thinking, oh please, no. But I had gone and Mr. Seidel had patiently drawn angles and worked through proofs, explaining at each step what he was doing and why. For my part, I had watched his hand as he wrote, admiring his neat penmanship, looking carefully at his wedding ring, wondering what his wife was like. When he finally looked up and asked me if I understood, I responded with a blank gaze. He’d given me a D– as an act of remarkable kindness.
“Can one of your friends help you?” I ask Travis.
“No.”
“Well, call Dad, then. He’ll know how to do it.”
“He’s on a stupid business trip.”
“Oh. Right. Well, then, I’m sorry, Travis. I don’t know what to tell you. I guess you’ll just have to talk to your teacher tomorrow.” I go back to the potatoes, out of enemy territory. I’m so glad I’m finished with school. If I were told to go home and spend my evening doing homework—in five subjects, no less!—I’d start screaming.
“Can I call King?” Travis asks.
Of course. Why hadn’t this occurred to me?
“Sure. It’s 247-8893.”
“You know it by heart?”
“Yes,” I say. And then, “I mean, it’s an easy number.”
Travis goes into the family room to make the call. He hates his math class, and I don
’t blame him a bit. But he’s going to have to get through it, or he’ll end up like me.
“King knew how to do it,” Travis says, coming back into the kitchen. “It’s easy.”
Well. His spirits have improved.
“What’s for dinner?” he asks. And when I tell him, he doesn’t offer his usual wounded commentary. Yes, his spirits have improved immeasurably.
Just before I go to sleep, I rub my hands over my breasts. Pain, on both sides, again. This has been happening a lot, all of a sudden. It can’t be cancer. Cancer doesn’t hurt. Cancer doesn’t show up on both sides. I must be starting to have breast pain when I ovulate. Rita always does. I turn onto my side, burrow into my pillow, think about whether it is time to ovulate. And then I open my eyes wide and lie still as death. I have just figured out my weight gain.
I sit up, slide into my slippers, go downstairs to look at the kitchen calendar with hands that are shaking. No X on any day last month. Or the month before. I press my fingers to my mouth, dry now, sticky. I sit at the table. How could I not have known this? This is exactly what happened with Travis. And I’d been so angry, because everyone else I knew had lost weight the first trimester. Not me. My appetite had been amazing. I’d gained and gained.
I push my face into my hands, moan. But then, hearing the front door open, I compose myself. Edward comes into the kitchen, heads for the refrigerator, then sees me.
“God,” he says. “I just had the date from hell. Remind me tomorrow to kill myself. What a relief to see you.”
Edward is such a pleasant man; I like him so much. He used to be a baby.
I burst into tears.
Edward leaves the refrigerator door open, comes to sit opposite me, takes my hand. “What?” he says. “What happened? Oh God, is it Travis?”
“Not exactly,” I say.
30
“Well, I just can’t believe this,” David says. He is keeping his voice low; the restaurant is crowded, but I imagine he feels like screaming “How?”
It’s a fair question. I’m not quite sure myself. But, “In the usual way, David,” I hear myself saying. “Sperm meets egg.”
“But aren’t you too old?”