CHAPTER 2
So that’s what I did, went home, hung up my
wet suit on the shower curtain rod, pulled on sweats. Then I went back out to
the front room and turned on the TV and set the sound at blast level. There was
nothing on in the afternoon of interest but it created light flickers and noise
I could ignore. If I played CDs on the stereo the music would have overwhelmed
me, the mood I was in, and left me crying.
Cyd and I had been roommates in college,
stumbling over each other’s backpacks, bumping into each other’s open closet
doors for two years. When Cyd and the guys graduated four years ago, college
ended for me, too, even though I had only made it through three years and had
barely enough credits accumulated to account for two years. I was weary of
signing up for classes that were filled, or forcing myself to sit at a desk
under a strip of fluorescent light committing to memory facts that bored me.
And I was sick of staring at blank Blue Books in attempts to create exam
answers to questions whose origins evaded me.
The U had fulfilled my requirements. I’d
tramped across its wide acre of new bricks surrounded by block-shaped
buildings, and jogged the tree-lined paths past its old Gothic-architectured
heart. In its crowded housing and musty coffee shops I had found what I wanted.
During my early teens my parents had
divorced. I’d been sent off to boarding school and then to college on a trust
fund left for me by a grandmother, but what I wanted was family. And that’s
what I found with my friends.
So
when the three of them graduated from the U, I went with them, renting an
apartment on Capitol Hill with Cyd. Gave her an excuse to put off living with
Macbeth.
“We’re okay for a weekend,” she once
explained to me, and I thought okay was kind of cold, but judging other
people’s sex lives is maybe not possible. “If I move in with him, we won’t last
three months.”
As Tom and I didn’t have a relationship to
figure out, that worked. There’d been a series of romantic disasters during
those three years on campus. Between brief and sometimes steamy affairs with
others, Tom and I had what could only be called casual sex, occasional, wonderful,
and never discussed afterwards. Okay, we sometimes discussed sex, but we never
discussed our lack of a relationship.
Tom and I liked each other and wanted to
remain friends. Does it say something about both of us and our inability to
commit to anything if I explain we agreed firmly on one point? Friends lasted,
lovers didn’t.
When Tom found another girl, and he always
did, guys do, I’d do some private weeping. But there was no point being jealous
when I wasn’t willing to play the steady girlfriend role. Had he ever
asked? Sort of, in the middle of
lovemaking, and afterwards we both pretended it had never happened.
Cyd and I had three rooms that were taller
than they were wide. A bay window peered out toward the street through the
tangle of vine maple that covered the old brick exterior. We painted the walls,
cabinets, door frames, radiators, and anything else that took paint. Flat white
of course. Macbeth, who knew how to do everything and did it well, built
bookshelves for our boxwoods of books, hung a clothes rod across one end of our
closetless bedroom, then wired Cyd’s stereo and mounted the speakers near the
ceiling. He repaired the leaking refrigerator and the nonfunctioning stove,
then shamed the landlord into paying for all the paint and lumber and rods as
well as for the wiring and hardware for the repairs.
Cyd and I scrubbed the nothing-color
carpet. For the first month we rolled out our sleeping bags every night. When
my next quarterly check from my trust fund finally arrived, we bought twin
beds. With her first paycheck and the attached confidence, Cyd added a couch to
her credit card. It was long and soft and gray because Cyd loved gray. I bought
throw pillows in a mismatch of colors.
Cyd had stood in the center of the room
staring at them, the day I came home from a shopping trip with Tom. He followed
obediently behind me, his arms so full he could hardly see around the packages.
We made a game of ripping off the plastic coverings, dropping them on the
floor, and laughed our way into silliness while tossing the pillows at each
other and then onto the couch.
And then we noticed silent Cyd.
“What’s wrong? Don’t you like them?”
She said slowly, “The velvet is nice. But
you have one green pillow and a gold bolster and a red cushion and a whatever
that is --”
“Halfway between blue and purple,” I said.
“Uh huh. And navy and wine. Plus they are
all different shapes and sizes. Why?”
Hadn’t she looked at the rod that ran the
width of our bedroom? Half of it was
hangers with neat gray stuff and the other half was hangers with every color
ever invented. At least I was good about keeping my stuff on my side.
“Okay, we can take them back,” I said.
“Can we?” Tom asked. “We’ve torn off the
plastic.”
“No,
no,” Cyd said quickly, “they’re fine, really.” She had this determined expression on her
face, the one she wore when it was time to clean the bathroom. I guess it
worked, I guess she decided she could live with the cushions because she never
mentioned them again.
Next, Mac had scrounged up table and chairs
from somewhere. He was the one who liked to sit on a chair and eat from a table
rather than sitting on the floor yoga-style.
Now, with the TV blocking out thinking, I
made myself a nest of the velvet cushions on the floor beneath the bay window
and worked slowly on a manicure. The concentration I applied to matching the
curve of each nail to the other nails kept me comfortably brain dead.
Macbeth banged twice on the front door with
his closed fist, causing the door to rattle, and then, in case I might possibly
know anyone else who knocked that way, he shouted, “April, it’s me!”
“Come on in!” I shouted back.
He used his key. We were always losing
ours. Macbeth was our backup in so many ways. And being Macbeth, he flipped on
the overhead light as soon as he entered. Tom would have stumbled around in the
gloom, no more aware that dusk had settled than I was, but Macbeth always knew
where he was, what he was doing, and how it related to the rest of the world.
“What’s with sitting in the dark, babe?”
“I’m not reading, mother, so it’s okay, I
won’t strain my eyes.”
Grabbing another cushion as he crossed the
room, he settled himself on the floor beside me. “Cyd phoned. She’ll be working
late. She sent me over because she’s worried about you. Something about a bummer
day.”
Ceiling lights suited Macbeth, have to
admit, accenting the neat haircut, clean profile, tailored sports coat, dark
slacks. I leaned my head back against the windowsill and treated him like eye
candy, not that I would ever tell him so. He was Cyd’s guy.
“I’m okay.”
“Not coming down with anything?” He pressed
the back of his hand against my forehead.
“A hangnail, maybe.”
“Cyd said you skipped an interview this
afternoon.”
“How could I go with a hangnail?”
“You’re probably the last female on earth
who can spend two hours pushing back her cuticles.”
I said, “Nobody loves a smartass.”
He smiled a quick smile that showed the gap
between his front teeth and softened his face. “Babe, you’ve skipped three
appointments this week.”
“Got my ass kicked twice today. Twice is
enough.”
“So you’re quitting?”
“Typical, Macbeth. Nag, nag. You got that
Midas touch, you know, everything works for you. Don’t expect the rest of us to
meet your standards.” I said it like a joke but it was true. He could multitask
and keep it all aimed at one ambition. Which is probably how he got the
nickname Macbeth, short for Macklin Braithe, when he was a child. It stuck.
“Bet you were the kid who picked up his games and went home if the other kids
forgot the rules.”
He kept the smile but it looked forced.
“You should go back to school and get your degree.”
“I wasn’t learning anything.”
“You’ll never get a decent job without a
degree.”
“Or with one. Look at Cyd and Tom.”
They had their degrees from the U and they
were both in jobs they hated, stuck in cubicles squinting into computers all
day.
“So what did they expect with history
majors? Get into something practical.”
Yes, sure, we’d been through this a dozen
times. Reminding him I was a trust fund baby and could squeak by if I stuck
with a shared apartment and pizza wouldn’t shut him up.
So I said the thing that always worked. “I
love you, Macbeth.”
He said, “Sure, April, I love you, too,”
but he didn’t look at me. Instead he stood up and walked out, pausing at the
door to say, “I need to pick up Cyd. We’re going out to some new Italian place
she’s heard about. Want to come with us?”
“No. I’m okay. Honest. Tom will be along
soon.”
Macbeth nodded and left, pushing in the
lock button on the door before he closed it. The knob rattled from the other
side when he turned it to make sure he had locked me in safely. After his car
pulled away from the curb, I got up and switched off the overhead light, then
returned to the window to stare out at the darkening sky above the moving
shadows of the vine leaves.
Could have told him to turn out the light
when he left. Cyd would have done that. Not me. I’d spent my life avoiding
confrontations, doing things my own way when no one was watching.
Once in a while I’d tried to defend myself,
explain why I wanted something, and I either stumbled over crappy explanations,
or screamed things I couldn’t take back, or dissolved into tears. So I quit bothering and kept my thoughts to
myself.
While I played with my thoughts, weaving
them mentally through the vine maple like threads, I saw Tom hurrying along the
sidewalk, his tall frame bent against the nonexistent wind. His head was
lowered as though he could only move forward by butting his way through the
mist. A forelock of dark wavy hair fell across his eyes. His trench coat
flapped around his long legs.
I banged on the window glass and waved but
being Tom and lost in his own thoughts, he didn’t hear me.
After I let him in he trailed me to the
kitchen, his hands on my shoulders, and we stared together at the interior
of the fridge.
“We could do eggs,” I said.
“How about eggs benedict?”
“We don’t have ham. Or muffins.”
“It’s the hollandaise that counts. We can
use toast.” He turned me to face him and wound his arms around me. He was tall
and thin and average looking until you looked up into his eyes. Tom had thick
black eyelashes out to there and his eyes were this lovely shade of dark brown,
sparkling and teasing and full of promises he never remembered he’d made. Oh
yes, I knew the boy well.
“Your coat’s wet.”
“Not inside,” he said, and opened it to
wrap me up, pressing me against the rough wool of his sweater. Right off I knew he’d split up
with his latest girlfriend. He nuzzled my neck until I giggled.
“We’ll never get supper done this way.” I
pushed away from him because I wasn’t about to be a consolation prize.
Despite the lack of ingredients, Tom, who
was a fair cook, put together a hot meal while I, who wasn’t, turned off the TV
and turned on the stereo and poured the wine.
We sat on the floor in the front room,
stretched out among the pillows and bolsters we had dragged off the couch.
Light from the kitchen doorway threw a patterned strip up one wall and across
the ceiling of the entry hall, giving us all the light we needed. I could feel
Tom watching me more than I could see him, his dark eyes shadows in his narrow
face.
“What’s the problem, April?”
“A couple of job interviews, no job.”
“Sorry, lovey. Wish I could help.”
“What about you?” I asked, because I knew
he hated his job. “Thought of something else to do?”
“Been thinking about going back to the U.
God, I still owe on my student loan. But I need a master’s.”
That was Macbeth’s chant, that Cyd and Tom
needed to get degrees in business or computer science. “What can you do with a
master’s? Besides teach high school that is.”
“Teenagers? Right. Forget that plan.”
“I’d rather panhandle than go back to
school,” I said.
“We could get married,” Tom said. He said
that regularly between girlfriends.
“What’s-her-name left you, huh?”
He laughed. “Yeah. Something about me
living with my folks. A turnoff, I guess.”
Tom lived with his parents and I lived on a
very small trust fund set up by a grandmother. Real shortage of Macbeth
ambition in there somewhere. Also, maybe you have to love something in order to
be committed to it and I didn’t have a definition of love. Nothing and no one
had ever happened to me that I could separate from the rest of my life and
identify as love.
Having the sort of prettiness that attracts
males, I’ve had guys following me since grade school, had sex for the first
time when I was in high school and since then had several lovers except that
they weren’t. I enjoyed sex but even at seventeen and not very worldly, I knew
I didn’t love the guy.
“How can you do that, have affairs with
guys you know you don’t love?” Cyd once asked me.
“I love the guy I’m with,” I had told her,
“when I’m with him, and isn’t that a song?
Thing is, even then, I know in my head I could have as much fun with any
of a half dozen other guys I know.”
To Tom I said, “So, lover, how would
marriage solve our financial problems?”
“It wouldn’t,” he said and managed to knock
over his glass of wine while reaching for me. “But it would make poverty more
fun.”
“Uh huh. You could cook for me,” I said
over my shoulder as I headed for the bathroom to grab a large towel. “And I
could clean up after you,” I added as I knelt and mopped up the wine from the
carpet. “I don’t want to hurt your feelings but I’m going to have to pass on
your offer.”
“Okay. I’ll ask again next week.”
He would, too, he would still be around
next week caring about me and so would Cyd and Macbeth. I could count on them
which was why I adored them.
“Tom, do you believe in premonitions?”
“The first time I saw you I knew you were
the woman I would marry.”
“Not that kind of premonition. Listen, be
serious.” Kneeling beside him, where he
had stretched out on the carpet, I put my face close to his so I could see his
expression in the dim light. He didn’t try to grab me, just lifted his face
enough to kiss me. I socked his arm.
“Stop, be serious.”
“I’m always serious when I kiss.”
“I’ve got to tell you something. Cyd thinks
I imagined it. I didn’t.”
The
scene was sharp, the palm trees, the brilliant sky, the shimmering heat, the
wheel beneath my sweating hands, the oncoming car. I described it to Tom,
quickly at first, afraid that like Cyd, he would think it was a memory of
something I’d once seen.
He surpassed me by saying, “Describe the
car we were in.”
“I’m not good at cars. Gray, I think, or
maybe light blue, and lots of chrome, the fenders were chrome and it had wide
strips around the front of the hood, and oh, there wasn’t any roof.”
“A convertible?”
“I guess so.”
“Do you know anyone who owns a gray
convertible?”
“No, and I’ve never seen a car like it
except, wait, I know, on PBS. That’s it, those Masterpiece Theater shows. Only
those are in England and they don’t have palm trees.”
“You’ve lost me,” Tom said.
Leaning against him, I closed my eyes and
tried to visualize the car. “You know those shows on TV that are set at some
English country estate and the women wear thin little dresses, the kind Cyd
looks for at vintage clothing stores, and everyone talks fast and drinks
nonstop?”
“Mysteries? Dramas? Which series?”
“I can’t remember names, oh, they take
place between the World Wars and everybody is very rich.”
“The twenties or thirties?”
“You’re the history major. Yes, I guess
so.”
“All right. Now describe Cyd and Macbeth to
me.” He ran a fingertip down my nose and
then across my lower lip.
I swatted his hand away.
“I can’t think when you do that.” But as I
concentrated on the scene, I saw them all again, not a vision but a memory.
“Cyd. She was sitting in the middle and staring right at me. You were all in a
row, all three in front.”
“A bench seat that went all the way across
the car. Was Cyd wearing the same style glasses?”
“No. No! She wasn’t wearing glasses. And
her hair, it was cut short and pressed
tight to her head. In some ways she didn’t look like Cyd at all, her face was
rounder, but I knew she was Cyd.”
“And me and Macbeth?”
“I couldn’t see you too well. You had one
hand in front of your face, like you were trying to keep the sun out of your
eyes. You were both wearing white shirts. And ties.”
“Macbeth, yes. Me, no,” Tom said.
“It was you and both of you had very short
hair.”
“Like an army cut, straight across?”
“No, but your hair was either cut or combed
close to your head, slicked back, I think maybe.”
“And the car you were driving? Describe the
dashboard. What about the hood? Was it a convertible, too?”
“I can’t remember and it doesn’t matter,
Tommy! What matters is that I killed us all, all of us, you, me, Macbeth, Cyd!
It was so real. What if I saw something that is going to happen?”
“You’re describing the past, lovey. So
whatever it is, it’s over.”
“Or we’re all on our way to a costume
party. People renovate those old cars and make them look like new.”
I felt the tears rising and I hated that,
hated going out of control. He touched my cheek, must have felt tears, because
he pulled me down into his arms and stroked my hair and kissed me.
Then he piled pillows around me, building a
wall of velvet and corduroy, saying, “That’s your barricade against the world.”
“Make the wall crenelated,” I laughed,
gulping back tears.
He made a few attempts at stacking cushions.
They slid off and he restacked, finally arranging them around us until we sank down, giggling, in the center
of the circle.
His hands and mouth were as familiar to me
as my own because sometimes, between other others, we did that, forgot we weren’t
lovers, remembered we did adore each other in our weird way. And I did not want
to think about anything else.
“Am I the consolation prize?” I whispered.
He stopped kissing me and lifted his head.
“Why would you think that?”
“You just broke up, didn’t you?”
“Oh.” He thought a moment, then said,
“Lovey, I want you because I want you, that’s all. Should I quit?”
“You should, but then I’d have to go stand
on a street corner and find somebody else.”
He laughed and between kisses he said other
things, probably that he loved me, probably that I ought to marry him. I didn’t
pay any attention because I knew him too well and he didn’t mean a word of it.
I did tell him, “I don’t believe a word you
say.”
And he mumbled, “That’s good, because I
don’t remember what I said.”
“Then just shut up and concentrate, Tommy
boy.”
He was warm and familiar and safe and kind
and gentle and loving and passionate and finally mind-blowing good.
Our barricade fell in on us unnoticed.
====================
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