A Regular Guy

  Olivia knew he considered it unseemly: her wish to hand herself up to him, a pale translucent liquid in a glass jar. In Olivia’s early love for Owens, everything seemed touched. She’d tried, for the sake of his judgment, to keep at least an appearance of interest in her life. But the same quality of erasure that made him queasy and slightly irritable during the day called up his most desperate cries at night. She gave herself to him entirely, and he accepted the enormity of her gift. Her pitched upper arms felt thin, grasping. She wore herself out against him, like the thinnest fabric, until she was raw.

  Now, for a long time, it had been different. She was less young. She still felt the urge to pour herself into a small jar and hand it up to him, but he did not feel the same way.

  Olivia scratched like a detective, trying to amass evidence of some evil. Jessica was proof. Having the material exhibit of what she’d suspected, she was relieved of a long haunting. It wasn’t just me, she said to herself. She felt frantic and somehow excited. Now we’re finally getting somewhere.

  Owens admitted his wrong and apologized. He attempted to convince her one more time to try. “We’re not kids anymore. We shouldn’t be living like this.” When he looked at her, he saw lines at the corners of her eyes. For the first time, he understood how you could love a woman as she grew old.

  But Olivia reared up. The power of beauty could equal the power of power. It was in her, something she had and counted on. She felt rage and bearing, dignity. She could walk.

  “Livia, let’s move into the new place and start over.”

  She knew he believed he was her last best chance. But who could say whether fortune was more lasting than beauty? One was made of harder substance, but if she couldn’t hold him, perhaps she would undo him first.

  She stood up and pushed her chair back.

  He pulled her hand down again. “Don’t, Olivia. Forgive me. Try.”

  The most profound and also the kindest feeling they had for each other was pity. Each felt the other had lost, early on, the gift that allows most people, some of the time, to know happiness.

  They touched with the tips of their fingers, but she refused to take his earrings again.

  Jane at last got to eat. Owens ordered double portions for the table, not only entrées but appetizers, side dishes and dessert. Jane held the big spoon with her right hand and pushed vegetables onto it with her left. Her chin tilted down close to the plate. Occasionally, she looked up from eating. Olivia spooned beautifully.

  When they left, Jane watched Owens find the car, then look at the spot across the street. He rubbed his eyebrows, as if he were counting animals in a procession no one else could see.

  Olivia was a reader, and though Owens was impressed and consoled by the paperback European novels she carried around, it nonetheless made her hard to live with. At night, she liked to read in bed. He wanted them to talk or lie in the dark with the windows open and maybe a candle on, looking up at the sky. Her lamp wiped out the stars.

  Also, he wanted to watch movies on TV. He liked it that she read, but he wished she could do it some other time of day. He thought she should be a teacher, like her cousin.

  But Olivia was out of sorts when she wasn’t reading a book, and she favored the great accounts of evil. In the beginning, Owens felt humbled when she read aloud stories of prisoners in gulags, Jews and Gypsies in camps, American Indians dying of European diseases. She deliberately sought out books about the worst extremities of humanity, it seemed, and more and more he was beginning to suspect that she identified the kapos and conquistadores with him. This bothered him.

  “Comere,” he said, standing at the open door to the patio. His bare foot rocked an anthill. “Before I can Susan and Stephen, I should get them to do something about all these weeds. And there’s a beehive over there.”

  Outside, on the terrace, amidst the dark-blue night, Olivia stood by herself, hands jammed in her pockets. “Are you changing your mind,” she asked him, staring. “Do you think Jane is yours now?”

  She asked him again later, in bed. He turned over, holding a fist of covers, and closed his eyes against her reading lamp.

  Love was strange, lying in bed with a man every night. She had no doubt that he would soon find himself in difficult conditions at work. He would be capable of great sacrifice and personal deprivation, somehow gathering his power. He would survive.

  Her father once said, “I wish to perish in the first wave,” when she’d asked why he wasn’t building a bomb shelter, when all the other men were.

  Owens was not like her father, and Olivia loved her father. But she remembered that all his life and even now, the man lying next to her with his eyes closed, a good day’s exertion on his features, did not live in the regular outside world. Where he lived, the fundamental question was and always would be survival. Which was perhaps the greatest force of her attraction to him, the drive surpassing even desire; or perhaps that was desire, because her sympathies were always, would always be, with the weaker side. “Let me perish in the first wave,” her father had said, in his light way, years before when the world was younger and bomb shelter building seemed preventative, almost optimistic in its carpentry. Now the first wave had perished and she had accidentally survived, a little dazed, wondering not how she had managed but for what, exactly, in a world so tilted and maimed.

  She tented her book and pranced to the bathroom. Olivia was not generally a prancer, but his floor was cold, the bathroom down a long hall. They’d slept on this futon in this house hundreds of nights, but Olivia still felt shy going to the bathroom. She closed the door now, with her bare foot, and in the white cold room, she liked to imagine she was alone and he couldn’t hear her. She couldn’t have explained this furtive fastidiousness. Olivia wasn’t squeamish. She worked in a hospital, after all. But she was conscious of the fragility of Owens’ romance. The movies he liked and the stories he favored all involved heroes and heroines who were grand and clean.

  Once, after making love in the middle of the day, he put on new underwear, and as he snapped the elastic, she could tell the clean dry cloth made him feel safe, like the last of his mother.

  Huck waited while Olivia peed into a small plastic vial. The walls of her apartment were so flimsy he heard the water splashing and her nervous laughter over it. At her tiny kitchen table they administered the blue powder that came with the kit, using tweezers. Nothing made Huck so buoyant as helping Olivia.

  Together they stared at the vial. It was turning deep blue. Huck got up to rub her shoulders. The kit said even faint blue was an indication.

  She felt something then, strange in her belly, connected by a hairline to her jaw, which made her queasy, quick to gag.

  “You can’t tell anybody, Huck,” she said. He was massaging her back, and she curled her shoulders, because he was coming too close to her sides. “And remember, Huck, you promised never to tell anybody about that other thing.”

  Years earlier, practically in childhood, Olivia and Huck had once been in a bed and taken their clothes off. The memory was something that still agitated Olivia. She believed she had benefited from her unusual childhood, except for that one night. Olivia had begged Huck to keep it secret, and to the best of her knowledge he had. But it worried her: she knew it was something Owens would not easily abide. She’d had to ask Huck again, although she hated to bring it up at all, because even talking about it seemed to include them in a primitive intimacy.

  Huck knelt in front of her, hands on her knees. “Of course I wouldn’t, Livia.”

  Even now, Olivia didn’t know why she’d done it. He’d wanted to. They had been living together, she and Huck and her brother, Nicholas. They had been young and very poor, and she was their wealth.

  Huck did remember that night, but not the way she assumed. He remembered bumbling, touching her mildly, trying to make her feel good. He revered Olivia and always felt a little guilty for the relief he gained when she was suffering; only when he was performing some service for her
did he feel worthy of her company at all.

  “He says he loves me more than anything else in the world, and then he leaves me alone in the car. He wouldn’t leave a bag of money alone, but he left me in an unlocked car.” Jane had delivered this little speech several times already when she repeated it for Julie and Peter. They were sitting around the remains of dinner at the table Julie had bought years before at the flea market.

  “He left you for how long?” Peter asked.

  The truth was Jane didn’t know. She’d said forty-five minutes when her mother first asked, and now she tried not to think about it.

  “That’s terrible,” Julie said.

  Peter shook his head, arms crossed. “Like a kid, your dad.”

  “I don’t know if I should even let him take her without me,” Mary said.

  Jane had enjoyed the meal when Owens finally came to get her. He’d hugged her to his side and they’d laughed, even Olivia. But when she came home and told her mother, she didn’t ever get to that part. Her mother got too angry. As Jane was talking now, she remembered the glove compartment: he did leave money in his car.

  “He just doesn’t get it,” Mary said.

  Jane hadn’t spoken to Owens since he’d had that fight on the phone with her mother, insisting it was fifteen minutes, not forty-five. “I believe my daughter over you, for God’s sake!” she’d screamed, and then hung up.

  “What if you made sure she had a quarter for a phone every time she went out with him, so between you and us, somebody could pick her up.”

  “She’s a kid, Peter; she’s not supposed to have to do that.” Mary spit this out with such venom that Peter skidded his chair back.

  “I still don’t see what the harm would be in getting a solid child-support agreement,” Julie said. “I mean, he’s not giving you a gift every month, Mary. That’s money you’ve earned.”

  “There’s more than child support, though,” Mary said. “There’s a lot that’s Owens and Mary, not just Owens and Jane.”

  Julie had heard this before. It seemed important to Mary to convince people that Owens cared for her. Only occasionally she slipped off the belief, when jagged facts made it impossible to sustain. Mary worried what would become of them if he ran for president and moved to Washington. She thought he could rig anything, even elections. It never occurred to her that he too might have silly hopes a sturdy woman would laugh off. You couldn’t conduct a conversation of an hour’s length with her without his name coming up. Whether he was God or the devil, he was never very far away.

  “Peter’s right,” Jane said. “I’ll call next time, so let’s talk about something else.”

  She realized, with shame, that she and her mother used to build huge constructions in the air to convince people he was the monster. She couldn’t possibly admit that she loved him. She understood, now, that all the years they’d talked about him later into the night, making him worse and worse, it had been a kind of love, and either one of them would have turned if he’d picked her. And Owens had picked Jane.

  Olivia wanted to get married. All of a sudden, she knew that. Karen Croen had been urging her to for years, and now the idea pressed on her intermittently through the day. Emptying a bedpan, hosing it with the rubber shower end, she gagged and rested her forehead against the cool industrial tile. She imagined cleaning a kitchen in a house that was hers. Regardless of what he thought of her for it, she wanted some of the regular things.

  That night, they drove up to the city for a big dinner. She wore the dress he’d once criticized but now seemed fond of; as they were dressing, he played with the sash. She was seated next to one of the five men in suits, Jane on her other side. Owens had invited Jane along, and here she was wearing jeans at a black-tie dinner.

  “Here’s looking at you, kid,” one of the five men said to Olivia, with an expression of approval. In return, she lifted her water glass. Later, in the middle of dinner, he leaned over and whispered, “You want him to marry you, we’ll get him to. Don’t you worry about that. Course he will, darling. He knows what’s good for him, especially when I tell him. It’s good as done.”

  Jane watched while Olivia stalled, her hair falling over her face. Her hair is so pretty, Jane thought, a color almost not any color.

  “Okay.” Olivia smiled. “I do.”

  Jane knew Olivia must have wanted it a lot, to say that with her there, because she could tell her mother. She understood, better than her mother or Olivia, that the two women were not really friends.

  Driving back on the wide, empty highway, Owens told Olivia about these men who long before had offered to wage his campaign. “How’s she doing back there?” he asked.

  “Fast asleep,” Olivia said.

  “She’s so pretty,” he said in a burst. “If I were a guy that age, I’d really go for her.”

  Olivia felt a pang. He’d said nothing at all about her tonight. But that was the way he was; he made the women in his life jealous of each other. And she wondered, as they drove in the dark, what if Jane had been a less attractive child? She was bright and pretty and a lot like him. An asset, easy to claim. But if she’d been ugly or disabled? Then suddenly, Olivia wondered if their own child could be.

  Jane did tell her mother when she got home. Mary wished she could remember the bald man’s name. They both felt amazed that there was someone above Owens who could make him behave.

  Huck ran into Mary di Natali at the Harvest Mall, walking with her head bent, examining a small slip of paper. He tapped her shoulder, then gave her a sideways hug. They walked together as she continued to study the slip, and then she blurted, “I knew it. He didn’t give me the thirty percent off. Oh, excuse me, I’ve got to go back. This was supposed to be on sale.”

  For no reason, except that she was upset, Huck followed along. They hadn’t seen each other since the November night in a New Orleans hotel room when, sitting cross-legged on the bed, she’d told him she wasn’t attracted to him and he’d given her money for a taxi to the airport. He was surprised to discover that now, more than a year later, he felt no anger towards her. As always, he wanted to help, to prop her up, to convince her she was just as good as the others. He ended up on the fifth floor of a department store, in the ladies’ coat section. Mary approached the desk with her head lowered but with a tone of such bitter grievance that Huck put his large hand on her shoulder and spoke himself. “Excuse me, but I’m afraid we thought this coat was on sale….”

  The young man behind the desk, politely relieved, spoke only to Huck.

  Mary took the raincoat out of the bag to try it on again. While most people’s concern went to Jane, Huck had always felt a particular sympathy for Mary. She tied the belt and turned around. The coat didn’t flatter her; its color tinged her complexion green, and she looked shapeless.

  Huck scratched his head. Jane, dressed by Mary, had always looked very snappy, so why couldn’t she pick the right things for herself? He immediately pitied her predicament.

  “Oh, Mary,” he burst out, spotting a yellow slicker hanging on display. “Why don’t you try that one? The color’s so nice. Let me find it in your size.”

  The yellow coat looked a hundred times better. Her complexion returned. The coat latched with metal buckles, but somehow you could sense Mary’s delicacy inside it.

  “You like it?” Mary said, then sighed. “Oh, this one’s not on sale.”

  “I’ll buy it for you,” Huck said, his arms shooting out in exuberance, forgetting for the moment that—given what Olivia told him—Mary lived on more money than he and all the other teachers he knew.

  The salesman confirmed the superiority of the coat and began the paperwork of exchange. They settled that Huck would pay the difference.

  Mary decided to wear the coat, and she liked it better every time they passed a mirror. Huck felt delighted to see her sneaking looks. He didn’t think of her as someone who looked in mirrors. On the escalator going down, she began to tell him about her grievance with Olivia, not j
ust Owens, for leaving Jane in the car.

  “Oh, Mary, don’t be mad at her for that. That was a terrible night, and it was all my fault. See, I’d told her about an affair Owens had had that she didn’t know about, and it was the same day she thought she might be pregnant.” The minute Huck said that, his hand on Mary’s shoulder, he remembered he’d promised not to tell anyone. Oh, well, he quickly allowed, that had been the lesser secret. The other he would never tell.

  But Mary pounced on the information. “She’s having a baby?”

  “Mary, I really shouldn’t have told you. It’s a secret, kind of, so don’t say anything. I just didn’t want you to be mad at her.”

  “But I’m glad I know. I should know. If he has another child, that’ll affect Jane.”

  “Please, Mary, promise you won’t say anything.” He turned around backwards on the escalator, hands out, beseeching.

  “I have to go, Huck.” She ran out at the bottom of the escalator. The pain returned, her sacrifice. And she’d given away hers for him.

  When Huck arrived at the bungalow, Jane was already sobbing on the floor. Mary was in her room with the door closed. He tried to talk to Jane, but she just hid her face in her arms, and thinking a woman might be able to help, he called Olivia. She sighed, not even sounding surprised, and said she’d be right over. And then there was nothing to do but pace and wait. Suddenly, Mary emerged from her doorway, looking blank and angry.

  “Surely—oh, please don’t cry…. Mary, it’s not what you think.”

  She ignored him and sat down by Jane. Huck had rarely felt so helpless. He offered to take them all for ice cream, and no one even answered his suggestion.

  Then Olivia came, and Huck stood back. Jane was still on the floor, with Olivia kneeling in front of her, saying, “A lot of times, I’m jealous of you. Because you’re blood.”

  Olivia drove up to the old Copper King’s mansion and waited for Owens in bed. Now she had to tell him. He’d always been bothered by her lack of virginity. He counted back the number of men who’d “been” with her. When he’d asked about her ex-boyfriends, his mouth went a certain way. She lied a little. He thought there were four.