“No, not like these.” I smiled. “Mostly as kids we ate rye bread, pumpernickel, and bagels. My father owns a luncheonette.”
Her eyes narrowed. “Didn’t your mother bake?”
“No.” I shook my head. “My grandparents lived with us. My grandmother baked cookies, pies, and—” I was about to say challah, but suddenly I felt shy about the braided bread we ate on the Shabbos.
“Well, when Gauguin was young, I baked every day. Right, honey?” She patted Gauguin’s hand and seemed to soften.
Gauguin nodded and took a big bite out of his biscuit. ‘Then”—she looked down at her hands— “when I got divorced fourteen years ago, I didn’t have time. I went back to school and trained as a dental hygienist.”
“Oh, do you like doing that?” I tried to brighten things. “I always appreciate going to get my teeth cleaned.” I smiled at her broadly.
“You do?” she asked, amazed. “Most people dread the dentist’s office.”
“Not me.” This seemed to please her. “I like keeping my teeth healthy.”
“Well, you do have a nice smile,” Alice offered.
“Thank you,” I said. “I even thought at one time of becoming a dentist.”
Gauguin burst out laughing. “Nell, you?” He pointed at me. “Come on.”
Alice took my side. All of a sudden she was a feminist. “Why can’t a woman become a dentist?” She turned on Gauguin.
“I didn’t mean that.” He held up his hand. “It’s just that Nell’s a teacher. I can’t imagine it.”
“Oh, it has always been a secret wish of mine.” I turned to Alice. “Did you know that Doc Holliday and Zane Grey were dentists? Also Thomas Welch was one. He was the founder of Welch’s grape juice.”
“My, I didn’t. Let me write that down.” She got up to get a pad and pencil.
When her back was turned, I made a face at Gauguin and whispered under my breath, “I’m not just a teacher. I’m a painter.”
He was taken aback, as though he’d forgotten all about that.
When Alice returned to the table, Gauguin announced, “Nell and I are getting married.”
Alice’s mouth fell open, but she quickly recovered. “Well, my, well, well, congratulations.” She bent over to kiss the top of Gauguin’s head and stroked his cheek. “My boy, I’m so proud of you.”
Suddenly she turned to me. “I thought they wouldn’t let you marry out of your religion.”
I felt my face flush. “Oh, my parents are very liberal,” I explained.
When Gauguin and I got back in the car, he leaned against the seat. “Whew, that was hard.”
“What was going on? After you announced our engagement, she ignored me the rest of the breakfast, except for that one jab at me being Jewish.”
“She’s never gotten over her divorce. It killed her. And she doesn’t want to lose me.” He started the car. “My dad had been cheating on her for years, but the final straw was when he went out with my old second-grade teacher. Maybe she thinks I’m cheating on her, too.”
“But if she feels so possessive of you, how come she never called and hardly wrote all the time you were in Taos?” It didn’t make sense.
“That’s the way she is.”
“Oh.” I nodded. Some explanation.
There was something in the way Alice sucked in the smoke on a Camel that I couldn’t forget. I thought about it the whole while we weaved through the streets of Minneapolis. Then I realized what it was: It accentuated her cheekbones. Gauguin seemed awkward with her. I sensed something yellow and sexual between them.
This will be hard, I thought to myself. I had no experience playing the other woman.
27
I FLEW BACK TO Boulder, gave notice at my job at the halfway house, and began to pack. On the long afternoon walks Eugene and I took, he would stick his face in the blooming lilac bushes. “So you’re going to be married?”
I slept with him my last night in Boulder. The next day he shook my hand before I stepped into the car, then touched my cheek. “Take care of yourself, Nell. I forgot to tell you, I love you. You are a great being.” I threw my eyes down to his chest. I couldn’t bear looking into his dark crow’s gaze. I took his hand in both of mine. “I will write,” I said.
Eugene leaned into the car and wrapped a red wool scarf around my neck. “I think it will be getting cold.” I nodded, not sure what he meant. I pulled away from the curb and headed toward Fort Collins.
A half-hour into my drive north, it began to snow. The snow fell hard. The full spring leaves caught the flakes and were weighed down by them. I could no longer see out my car window, so I pulled to the side of the road and walked two miles in my sneakers to a motel. The wind blew steadily, and above me I heard cawing. I looked up and saw a crow. It circled twice over my head and then disappeared, swallowed up in this great spring snowstorm. I knew the crow was Eugene.
The next morning, the hills outside the window of my rented room glistened. I read magazines in the motel lobby all morning until the roads were cleared, wrapped in Eugene’s red scarf. As I ate my lunch of scrambled eggs and English muffins, I felt the gaze of his crow eyes. “You are a great being.” What had Eugene meant by that?
At about two in the afternoon, I was able to get back on the road. The sun felt good as I walked to the car. The car was cold, but it started right up. I had trouble getting the clutch in second and had to let it warm up before I took off into the white spring.
I drove across the northern part of Colorado and was in Ogallala, Nebraska, when I stopped in a Howard Johnson’s for the night. I’d rarely stayed in a motel—mostly I slept on friends’ floors. Now I was staying in one two nights in a row. They gave me room 211. My eyes were red from driving, and I called Gauguin for the first time in two weeks.
“Gauguin, I’m tired. I’m scared. You should have flown in and driven back to Minneapolis with me,” I cried.
“Nell, don’t start,” he said.
We were on the edge of an argument. Instead we hung up quickly. When I got off the phone, I went down to the cocktail lounge.
“Can I have a scoop—no, make it two scoops of coffee ice cream with bittersweet hot fudge?” I asked.
“Ma’am, we don’t serve ice cream in the cocktail lounge,” the waiter explained to me.
“Well, is the luncheon counter open?” I asked.
“No, ma’am, not at this hour,” he said.
“Well, then, how am I going to get my coffee ice cream?” I asked.
“I’m sorry. We serve drinks here.” He began to get rigid. I paid it no mind.
“Could you sneak into the fountain area and get me some ice cream? Please—I’ll pay extra,” I cajoled.
The waiter, who looked eleven but, I was sure, had already studied geometry in high school, sighed. I looked at his large Adam’s apple. I waited.
He did it! He proudly brought me two scoops in a silver dish. The hot fudge was cold, but it was the best sundae I ever had. I ate it slowly with a silver spoon. I wanted to make it last.
28
THE NEXT MORNING, it occurred to me: Should I stop at Anna’s? After all, I was in Nebraska! I took out the map. Why hadn’t I thought of this before? I knew she lived in Omaha, in a small apartment over a hardware store. I could follow Highway 80 and stay with her overnight. At first I had thought I would drive straight through to Minnesota, but now I was in no hurry to hit Minneapolis. I was getting scared. It would be good to see Anna.
I stopped at a Texaco station and asked the attendant where I could find a pay phone. He pointed to the cashier’s room.
I dropped a lot of coins in the slot and dialed Anna in Omaha. How come I had never thought of calling her long distance before? I asked myself. We only wrote. The phone rang twice.
A man answered. “No, Anna moved.”
“Who are you?”
“I took the apartment over from her a month ago. Just a minute. I think I have her new address,” he said.
I wro
te down the phone number he dictated, but just as he began to recite her address I spied a cooler full of Tab, Dr Pepper, Fresca, Coke, and bottles of orange juice. I stretched the phone cord to get at the OJ.
“Just a minute. Just a minute. What’s the address?” I asked again.
“Eight twelve Columbine,” he repeated. “It’s in Dansville. She moved there.”
I hesitated. “Where’s that?” “North,” he explained. “What’d she do that for?”
“Money. She was offered a part-time teaching job there for next fall.”
I unscrewed the lid from the OJ bottle. “Thanks.” I hung up and stuck my hand in my pocket for more coins.
Her phone rang. It rang and rang. No answer. I hung up and headed for the car to look at my map.
“Hey, you! Aren’t you going to pay for that?” I had the distinct impression that someone was addressing me.
I stopped, turned around, looked at the attendant in the doorway, then looked down at the OJ in my hand. “Oh, sure. Sorry. Is Dansville far from here?”
My plan was to drive to Dansville and find 812 Columbine. It wouldn’t be hard. I’d surprise Anna. She’d love it. If she wasn’t home, she couldn’t have gone far. The town looked small on the map.
I got off the freeway at Grand Island and headed north on 281. The road followed the railroad tracks for a while. Most of the towns I passed had only a bar, a gas station, and a tall granary. Then the land spread out around it. This was the lonesomeness Anna had talked about. I stopped in a relatively large town that had a strip of stores and walked along the sidewalk looking in the windows. People eyed me suspiciously. Emerson, pop. 127, knew who belonged. I didn’t. I went into a secondhand store and browsed through the boxes of clothes, mirrors, and plastic dinnerware. I found a pair of very used boys’ brown cowboy boots. I tried them on. They fit perfectly. Well, no, they didn’t fit perfectly. They were a half-size too small, but they were perfect anyway and I bought them for fifty cents. The woman behind the counter was luxuriously large and wore a beautiful full-length nylon dress with green flowers on a black background. She had bought it in the store just the other day, she told me.
“Oh, you’ll like these. Just oil ’em a little when you get home.” I continued on to Dansville. When I got there, the bank clock blinked 8:02. I could see it from blocks away. As I waited for the streetlight to change, I had this strange feeling that it was always 8:02 in Dansville; 8:03 never came up. A sign on the road said the town’s population was 20,000. I stopped at the Sunoco.
“Where’s Columbine?” I asked the attendant.
“Not sure. Hey, Bert, where’s Columbine?” The attendant turned to Bert.
Bert took the cigar out of his mouth and grinned as though he had just been asked something sexual. “Columbine, huh? What do you want with that?” I was too tired and too eager to see Anna to be bothered with Bert. I didn’t say anything. He pointed north. “Take this road up to the next light, turn left, go five blocks. There’s a stop sign. Make a left, and there she is. What number do you want?”
“Eight twelve.”
“Should be four blocks down.”
I repeated the directions to make sure I’d got them straight. It was a watery gray dusk and the flatness of the land gave it a big feeling. I parked in front of 812, a big white clapboard house. I rang the bell. A man with a big belly answered.
“Is Anna here?” I could hear the television in the background. There was a commercial on about Pepto-Bismol.
“No,” he answered through the screen door.
“Well, do you know where she is?”
“She lives up there.” He opened the screen and pointed to a door on the second floor.
“Thanks.” I ran up the outside stairs and rang the doorbell four times in a row. No answer. I sat down on the top step and rested my head in my hand. What had I done? What if she had gone away for a few days? I decided to check out the neighborhood and then come back.
I walked to the corner and turned left onto Spitz Avenue. It was dark out now. “Where could Anna be?” I was feeling foolish for arriving without contacting her first. I passed a bar on the corner called the First Avenue. Its storefront had that art deco kind of glass brick. I turned around, opened the door, and walked in. It was the type of place where I imagined Anna went. In the dim light I could see a long wooden bar with black booths opposite and a jukebox lit up emerald green. I sat in the first booth. No one else was in there.
“Can I help you?” The old waiter wore a white apron.
“Yes. Can I have a glass of sherry?”
“You mean cherry? We have cherry-flavored brandy. Blackberry and strawberry, too.”
“No, sherry. You know,” I said.
“How do you spell it?”
“S-h-e-r-r-y.”
“Nope, never heard of it.”
“Okay, can I have a glass of Chablis?” I paused. “I mean, white wine.”
The waiter scratched his head. “I’ll see if I can find you some.” He came back with a beer glass filled to the brim with white wine. “Seventy-five cents, please.” He held out his hand. I gave him a dollar and told him to keep the change.
What a bargain, I thought, until I tasted the wine. It tasted like squirrel piss. The lonesomeness of Nebraska entered the bar as a smoky mermaid. She made me thirsty and I drank the terrible wine too fast. Lonesomeness left me. I began to miss her because in her place came the ocean. The barstools and the jukebox lights were swimming. I got up and backstroked out the door. The night was humid.
I made a left instead of a right down Spitz Avenue and became slightly lost. A car of teenage boys in a convertible zoomed by and yelled, “Orange-ade tonight!” I thought I’d like to Orangeade with them and watched the car disappear in the distance down the great boulevard of Dansville, Nebraska. The truth was, I was suddenly happy and at ease. I’d always fantasized about small towns. Now this Jewish girl from Brooklyn was finally getting to be part of small-town America. On this night I walked casually down a small-town street in khaki shorts looking like everyone else. Well, not quite. I was dark and I had a heart tattoo on my left shoulder blade. I had dropped acid about fifteen times, and that alone made me a stranger to this town in the middle of America.
On my first acid trip I’d watched a red rose in a vase tremble, opening its petals. I watched it for ten minutes, and in those ten minutes it had opened completely and with it my heart. By the end, I was screaming in glee and my friends ran in from the next room, afraid I was freaking out and about to jump out the window. I tried to tell them that the rose and I were one, that my insides were the same red as the petals on the flower. They looked at each other and worried about me. In that moment, I understood lonesomeness and knew that behind it was the rose, that without the rose there was no lonesomeness. You can only be lonesome if you once had a connection.
If there was so much lonesomeness in Nebraska, I thought, there must have once been some great connection. I felt I understood this place as I walked back toward Anna’s. The trees seemed particularly inviting. The house lights swam in my eyes as though I were squinting. I had gotten the heart tattoo after that first acid trip. Where was Anna anyway? This time as I walked down Columbine, I knew she was home.
Anna didn’t seem that surprised to see me at first, not that excited either, but she warmed up. That was the way she was. As though she’d put her emotions out on the laundry line to dry and then left them there. I had to yell at her, “Hey, Anna, don’t forget that love T-shirt you left out on the line. It’s gonna fade in the Nebraska sun.” She turned her face to me, smiling, and she remembered. Emotion. She seemed to be more beautiful than she’d been nearly a year and a half ago. She was wearing a pink shirt, and her hair was long. I’d forgotten about her cheekbones. She sure had them. Her face was like a valentine that came to a point at her chin.
“So, you’re going to marry Gauguin,” she said, looking up from her mason jar filled with lemonade. It was 2 A.M. We were sitting cross-legged
on her brown couch, facing each other. As usual, Anna had a small place, one room. The bed was near the couch. We’d been sipping her homemade drink slowly for the last two hours.
“Yes, I’m going to marry Gauguin.”
“How come?” Anna asked.
“Because I can’t be without him, and I’m going to be thirty.”
“What does that have to do with it?” She was good at asking questions.
“I don’t know. When I hit thirty, I just want to be married. I never did before in all the years in Taos.”
Anna looked at me suspiciously. I wasn’t feeling too sure. I shrugged my shoulders. “It’s something I have to live out. I’m still in love with him. He’s my golden boy.” I put my finger on a slat of the Venetian blind and pressed it so it bent and I could see out the window. It was quiet outside and there was a Chevy pickup parked across the street.
I glanced back at Anna. She was really looking at me, in a way I’d never seen before. It made me nervous. I caught her gray eyes. They held me like a dash in the middle of a sentence. My nerves disappeared. I heard twigs snapping. She bent toward me and placed her lips on mine. I suppose someone would call this a kiss. I wasn’t sure, because she was a woman and I was a woman, but, yes, it was one pair of lips against another. I closed my eyes. She kissed me again. I walked through doors, down long gray corridors with windows high up opening onto a blue sky. I kept walking.
After my mouth had been kissed to the color of plums and the shape of Italian tomatoes and my body was a pregnant fruit, Anna stood up. She led me over to the nearby bed, and she lay down. I lay down really close to her, as if I were a paper clip and she a horseshoe magnet. Anna slowly unbuttoned my cotton blouse. This was a woman’s hand that now put its face over my right breast. I felt the awe of a child flying down a water slide in summer. I dove down, down into dark water.
We became hips, legs, small tender creases, lips between our legs, mounds of rough hair and sucking sounds, licking saliva and salt. Anna wasn’t Anna. Nell wasn’t Nell. We were woman, one woman, and I took woman into my arms for the first time. I wasn’t sure if I was hugging Anna or Anna was hugging me or I was hugging myself. But it was the delicacy of her face that astonished me the most. Could this be what a woman’s face is like? This cheek, these lashes, this shadow around the nostrils? I ate Anna whole that night as though she were a watermelon and my face dripped with pink juice.