26

I sit at my computer, trying to recall betrayal, both sides of it, how it feels to give in to the pleasure of my name in the mouth of a new man. Such betrayal – major or minor, done unto or doing unto – is the sour half-and-half in the coffee of marriage, is it not? Inextirpable. As Emma inches toward betrayal, I wonder: What does it do for my real life story to consider re-marrying #1? My longest stint in therapy was with a lively woman whose default question was “Trix, tell me true, what are you getting out of this?” A question she usually applied to some neurotic or puzzling behavior. So what am I getting out of considering re-marrying #1?

It adds spice. Some dramatic tension to my hum-drum. As A.A. Milne wrote: “These are my two drops of rain, going down the window pane. All the best and all the worst come of which of them is first.”

Pluck the petals from a daisy: I’ll marry, I won’t.

And why now, when Emma wakes up every day wondering if she should still be married to Joe? For that does seem to be Emma’s intrusive question. Is the membrane between fact and fiction degraded? And when this book is finished, will my dilemma fade away? Is #1 and his proposal simply emotional research?

Rob thinks so.

Professor Rob Mokotoff and I talk late at night, sometimes for hours, and the quality of our telephone service is such that I feel he’s whispering in my ear. Me in my jammies with the penguins, Professor Mokotoff, packrat par excellence, in his study surrounded by flotsam borne on a sea of solitude. He has no parents, nor siblings, nor cousins, and I sometimes wonder if that’s the reason he has accumulated so much – well – stuff. Photos of Twain and Hemingway and Melville and photos of friends and the offspring of friends and his parents in the apartment in the Bronx when he was their only child – surprise!  Photos of him with the loves of his life, even though in many of our conversations we sink to lovelorn mudslinging. What she said those nights he waited up alone for her, how he spray-painted whore on the wall, how she ran off impulsively and married a former lover while wearing Professor Mokotoff’s mother’s diamond. It gets gritty. Nasty.  In the telecom confessional. Every curse and verbal blow jars my body. I sip too much wine to minimize the shock.

Professor Robby Mokotoff lives in a two-story quasi-Colonial brick house on Washington Street, not far from campus, with his two beloved cats, Poe and Che. One of the scrubby trees in the front yard is named for me. The lawn Nazis have been after Professor Mokotoff to keep his place tidy, but so far he’s prevailed; I doubt you need the lawn details. It is the sort of lawn city ordinances were written for. The Georgian pediment over the front door rots away; the Kerry/Edwards posters are dog-eared. Sometimes I leave gifts of food in the space between the aluminum screen and the door: a half dozen muffins or a Tupperware container of Bunny’s Spicy Tofu Stew.  (See Outtakes for the recipe.)

Twelve years ago when I first knocked on his door, he wouldn’t answer. I spied him through the tiny transom window of the door; at the top of the stairs he crawled on his belly to avoid me. After that, he scotch-taped a piece of used gift wrap over the window. Eventually, though, he let me in and now he lets me in every time. Into the nicotine-saturated den of books and DVDs and carefully labeled videotapes and armies of vitamins and minerals and herbs and Shania Twain posters and calendars and exercise equipment and furniture he inherited when his father died, shlepped by borderline-criminal Israeli movers all the way from New York to Dowdyville, and stuffed animals and cat toys and cat condos and college sweatshirts with the sleeves torn off and brilliant papers he wrote at Harvard and postcards sent to him from Europe or Asia and his guitar he never plays any more and LPs from the old days and his photos of himself with long hair and bushy beard and photos of himself as a baby and cutthroat knives he swears he secreted in his boots in the Bronx.  All that, all Robby.

This one night he gives me a crash course in literary theory, which, as the last self-taught writer in America before the cancerous rise of MFA programs, I managed to avoid studying.  I am like a kid who had polio in third grade and missed out forever on long division. Carnivalization. Fabulation. Vorticism. I whisper the sounds back at him; prairie snow pounds my window; this way learning lies, whisper to whisper, in flannel sheets.

Everything comes back to teaching, one way or the other. About his love of cats, he says, “There’s a lot of things to love about cats. For one thing, none of them has read Derrida, and they never cite him either. In fact, this is the chief difference between a cat and a Theory and Cultural Studies student. They don’t read Derrida either, but they won’t shut the fuck up about him.”

What interests me most is the hermeneutic code as he explains it. “Think of it like a rope and if you slice into the friggin’ rope you’ll see all these different aspects of the narrative, structure that teases us to keep us reading, the cultural code, the semic code, the code of action or plot.  All these questions arise and everything but the metaphysical gets answered. In ‘Indian Camp’ what’s the one friggin’ question that doesn’t get answered? Why does the Indian kill himself. The hermeneutic code propels you through the story with one foot on the brake and one foot on the pedal, you want to get there, but you don’t want it to end, you know that feeling, that’s so fuckin’ great.”

When Professor Mokotoff goes away, I take care of the cats. I wear special toxic dump clothes – torn jeans and shirts I don’t care about – so that smoke won’t infiltrate my good clothes. While the cats are eating I read the reminders he’s posted around the house.

            E-ticket?

            I.D.

            Extra I.D.

            Distilled water for cats

            Time lights

            Check timed lights

            Check front door lock

            Check garage door

            Drive around the block and check the door again

 Living alone is work, thankless work, no one acknowledges it, not even Dr. Phil. We solitudes organize minutiae; we make lists; we have particular arrangements for our stuffed animals; we double-check the locks; we try not to ask our friends for too much; we make sure we have a good supply of movies and popcorn, lest we be caught at home in a blizzard with no one to fuck; we double-check the locks; we account for time in increments couples don’t understand because couples loll around and time passes affectionately or irritably for them and they don’t have to account for it; we work when they are fixing dinner, we work when they are having sex, however much they might complain in surveys that it’s boring or a chore; we work when they are hand in hand walking down into Happy Hollow Park or huffing and puffing, jogging on the trail in matching windbreakers; we have certain friends we are allowed to call at any time of the day or night or on a Sunday afternoon when we haven’t spoken to another person, heard another real human voice, since Friday; there are a few certain people to whom we can say “I’m lonely,” and they get it, they don’t protest and tell us to go to church or volunteer. We double-check the locks.

Boomers of Our Time, Professor Mokotoff and I, before we met, had been through mutual obsessions. Freud, Einstein, Jung, Ram Dass, Dylan and the Dead, LSD, hashish, The Village Voice, Grove Press, the Whole Earth Catalog, the anti-war movement way back when, Fritz Perls, Esalen, hot tubs, nude volleyball, organic gardening, compost, The Aquarian Conspiracy, God is Dead, God is genderless, God is everywhere, secret heretical ambivalence about abortion, love of Hemingway, love of short stories, love of Chekhov, wolves, chimpanzees, and an abiding loathing of all things Republican. For starters.

So when I tell him that #1 has proposed to me, right around the corner from St. Pat’s Cathedral, he digs in his heels. If I get married again, I won’t be in his lonely hearts club. The IAA. I'm Alone Again. 

I called Professor Mokotoff and left a rather long and convoluted explanatory message, giving him a heads up about this passage and his role in the novel. He’ll have the right of veto. It’s only fair. The next day at the office, fourth floor, no windows, he said, “You’ll put the women swooning over me in there -- won’t you?” Do we ever relinquish the desire to be desired?  

           

 

27

 Zubin talks about his daughter Bert. She’s nineteen and unpredictable. She wants to be an actress. She and her mother Vanessa live in Oxford, England. His marriage lasted not quite three years. “I got Bert out of the deal,” he says. “I’m lucky to have her. Even if she causes no end of worry.” Of Vanessa, he says, “We are what you might call friends, if you saw us together. We have this mutual project we must complete: raising Bert. We talk on the phone – some would say too much. Whatever that means. I always feel, however, that Vanessa pities me. She has this look on her face. Bemused. A look that says she’s glad she doesn’t have to put up with me in the day to day.”

Peering over his glasses, he wags a finger in Emma’s direction. “I’m difficult. You’ll see,” Zubin says. “If you stay more than a day or two. How long are you planning to stay?”

“I don’t know. Is that all right? I’m getting my bearings. And re-vamping the trip without Joe.” 

Emma wants to mention Joe again. And possibly again.

When Zubin speaks her name, she thinks she sees the numinous lasso of desire twirling expertly from him to her. But she’s not sure. She’s not a good judge if it. She’s rusty when it comes to these matters.

Marriages, divorces, offspring, stints in detox, returns to graduate school, moves to the diplomatic corps, entrepreneurial escapes, retirement plans: he fills her in on the further whereabouts of colleagues of thirty years ago, taking pleasure in human foibles, but not in a mean spirit. He makes her laugh; amnesiacs must feel like this when they wake up.

Gauzy darkness presses against the windows. He pours fresh drinks. She takes out the Silk Cuts she has carried from Dublin and she smokes. It feels so good, she smokes another. She tries – unsuccessfully – to squash a memory. Zubin tickling her. At a party. She had not quite fallen in love with Joe. There had been plenty of drinking. And a parlor game called “Smoke.” Joe had gone home early. In the game, Zubin compared her to a flower: “L’erica.” Heather – tough, tenacious, able to thrive in adverse conditions. Later that night she sat on his lap. She wore a sweater set, her only cashmere then, pink with pink seed pearls around the neckline. She had felt wild, indiscriminate, a feeling that crept away a week later when Joe and she declared themselves. She grew up. She transferred all the lust she was capable of to Joe.

 “Shall we get you settled? Go to dinner?”

They dress in raingear again. Haul the luggage out and across the slick granite piazza. The rain has turned to mist. Birds settle in the copper beech and broach their evening songs.

Inside, Old Larch smells the same. Something dusty, something like the cologne of young people. And the cleanser used on the tile floor. The stairs narrow as they go up, and Emma’s room is on the third floor: small, with a slanted ceiling and low windows that look out on the piazza if you kneel before them, where she used to keep a low-slung beach chair to read in and watch the piazza, watch the students disappear in twos and threes, coming inside after dinner, until the piazza would be empty, ringing with the echo of their voices. Someone has made the bed with crisp, ironed, white sheets. A morsel of chocolate, wrapped in foil, has been left on her pillow. A still life has been arranged on the night stand:  red radio, daisy in a clear vase, tissues. The bed is the same bed! Its frame painted yellow. Only the telephone is new.

“I love it,” she says. And, “May I use that phone?”

Zubin looks on proprietarily, delighted that she loves the room. “The switchboard isn’t on. But you can dial out yourself, if you have a phone card.”

“I do.”

“Should I leave you then, to freshen up, and use the phone?”

“I won’t be long.”

“Ring the bell at the house. I’ll come down.”

She shuts the door behind him. The young woman she was rises to the surface, as if she has been buried under the onslaught of that other life. Pilsen. Being a mother. The commute to the north side. Joe’s funk. She unpacks her suitcase, folding the tops and sweaters into a drawer and hanging the slacks on metal clip hangers in the closet. Belongings of the current tenant – a math teacher, Zubin said, gone home to Edinburgh for the summer – are in the closet: a scarf on the floor, a flowered flannel robe, and necklaces – glass beads, turquoise, shells, and clay – on chrome hooks. A few CDs lay scattered on a book shelf. She has no idea who the musicians are, but she could almost take over this room, wear that scarf, that robe, become the woman who deliberates over which earthy necklace to wear. Teach here again. Again –

It’s a brand new thought.             

One she scoffs at. 

It’s mid-afternoon in Chicago. The phone card has thirty-three minutes remaining, plenty, and she dials through to Sophie, who picks up immediately.

“So good to hear your voice,” Emma says.

“You, too.”

 “You sound well, sweetie.”

 “I’ve been sleeping tons. How’re you?”

 “I’m at School of the Lake. At last.”

  “How does it feel?”

  “It feels like --” Emma hesitates, sure of what she means, but not sure if she should let it out.

“Like what?”

“Like I’d like to do this again.”

 “Teach there?”

 “Or somewhere like this.”

 “Maybe you will, Ems.”

“It’s a crazy thought. Not worth the minutes on this phone card,” Emma says. “What’s going on there? Why’s it been so hard to reach everyone?”

“Dad’s gone out to the farm.”

“You’re kidding.”

“Didn’t you sort of know he would? He wants to sell the Skylark. Liz is out there with Tommy. And Benny. Uncle Leo’s here with me.”

“How’re you doing, really?” Emma can hear the scuttle of Pilsen traffic. She aches to be there. She grips the phone tightly.

“I manage.” Sophie sighs. “Don’t feel bad about not being here. Don’t start that.”

Their telephone connection is crystal clear, but emotionally Emma can barely hear Sophie. “I miss everyone.”

“We miss you, too,” Sophie says, rote phrase, what’s expected. An uplilt of dismissal in her voice.

After they hang up, Emma lies on the bed, staring at a milk-blue stain on the ceiling. She hears Ada Richman saying, “You have to let go of all that.” There is something about institutional life that makes her feel safe, a return to growing up in her father’s school in New Orleans. The girls in their magnolia-colored dresses at graduation, the boys with bow ties. She always loved the routine – the caroling at Christmas, the newbies arriving by train in still-muggy September – the familial. The routines enfolded her. After the divorce she and her mother were cast out – that’s what it felt like – when she was twelve, and nothing desperate or traumatic happened, but it was lonely living with her mother, just the two of them. It was silent. Once they moved to Chicago, every morning her mother would turn on the radio in the kitchen and the radio announcer’s voice was supposed to buffer them from loneliness.

The telephone rings; she picks up on the second ring.

Zubin says, “Is everything all right at home?”

 “Yes.”

 “Are you crying?”

 “Everything’s – fine.”  

 “You don’t sound it.”

 “I miss Sophie, damn it. I miss her so much.”

 “Let’s talk.”

 “I’ll get myself together.”

“Hey. I like the sound of your voice on the phone.”

Emma laughs.

“You have a good laugh, love.”

She guesses that he calls every woman love-this or love-that. It is a habit. A bus driver would do the same, on a good day. It doesn’t mean anything. But she couldn’t help liking it. It was only natural to like it. To want endearments and what had been scarce. 

The rain has ended. Trees and cobblestones and flowers appear freshened, vivid, in the lamplight. And beyond, the darkness begs to be stirred by Emma and Zubin. He’s waiting at a bench in the piazza, one foot up, tying his shoe.

Once past the gate, at the curb, he takes her hand as they cross the street. A gentlemanly gesture, a bridge. Emma likes the feel of a man taking her hand as they cross the street. It is the gesture of care I was imprinted with in Charleston with Burns over thirty years ago. Husband #2 would hold my hand as we jaywalked in New York or Chicago, as we crossed against student drivers on campus. Emma has the sense that they might fly, eternally puerile. At the restaurant they are seated on an upstairs patio, sheltered by a sea blue awning. In the distance the red-tiled roof and arches of Madonna del Sasso are visible, and beyond, the lake. It is here, in the soft light of the brazier burning, that they tell the whole truth. It is as if she has been waiting for him, someone to give the attention to that Joe steadfastly refuses. Considerate waiters serve them unobtrusively. This installment of the whole truth lasts until one in the morning. The whole truth encompasses Chanti’s death, Liz’s workplace trauma, Emma’s desire to move, Zubin’s daughter’s troubles, her inability to stay in school, and his romances – major and minor – over the years. 

At the end of the evening, Emma confesses how out of touch with home she feels. The way everything back there seems half-hidden. Zubin leans across the bistro table. He rubs his own cheek and chin, as if assessing his whiskers. Candlelight is kind to his face. He says, “You’re here now. Let’s enjoy being here.” His voice is not dutiful or deliberately compliant. He likes her. She feels ashamed of wanting his attention.

Pointedly he does not take her hand again. Zubin walks Emma to Old Larch, and they have synchronized their footsteps.

“It’s so quiet. Is everyone gone?” Emma says.

“Not a soul stayed behind. Even the cleaning staff – they’ve gone home on four weeks’ holiday.”

She can smell his pipe tobacco, fruity, a broth – it seems to linger on the shoulders of his jacket. He catches her eye and stops in the center of the piazza beside the dry fountain. A coppery Athena rises from the center of the fountain, her hair green with moss. Over his shoulder mountain bikes lean in rows against the back wall of the property. She waits before meeting his eyes. When she does, Zubin says, “Let’s go walking tomorrow. You need to break in those boots.”

 “Agreed,” Emma says.

 He kisses her cheek: that warm brush, cheek to cheek.

“Can you feel it?”

She says, “What?”

“Something between us?”

She pitches back, startled. She watches herself from elsewhere: it’s as if she’s standoffish or timid. Which she isn’t, she wants to insist. Then it takes only a dash to reach Old Larch, where the key is so worn that a quick jab admits her to the safety of the dormitory.