Among the Ten Thousand Things (4 page)

The door to the courtyard was through a long hall in the basement, past the boiler room that hummed, the fluorescents bright over the white washing machines, the playroom with its plastic castle and alphabet foam floor. In the basement, as in the elevator, Jack lost reception, but got it back in the open air of the shaft, where he crunched across the gravel and stood amid the litter that was his words and dialed the girl.

The phone rang awhile. It was late, but she stayed up. He’d never been afraid of her, but he was a little now, waiting for her to answer, afraid of his own anger, of what letting himself be angry would do.

He never found out, because she didn’t answer. And so he went around picking up her pages, which were cool on the ground and made him realize for the first time that the night had grown a bit chilly.

i want to cum all around your mouth like lipstick and i want you to lick it up.

In some other context, he could have gotten hard, reading it all over. He thought if she had only sent the letters straight to him, he might even have fucked her again. But that wasn’t what the girl wanted, sex. Probably it wasn’t ever what she wanted. Women were always deceiving him about that. He was always lowballing their demands.

He got the stack of papers pretty near assembled, if worse for wear. Certainly there were a few pages missing, coasted onto ledges or into the bathrooms and back bedrooms of their neighbors. A nice surprise those would be for someone come morning.

Jack tipped back his head and looked at the square of sky the building made. Starless city sky, just barely distinguishable from the building, silhouetted black and dotted, as his eyes ran down the brick, with squares of yellow, cheerful warm.

He hummed to himself, to the night. Things would turn out okay. For him, somehow, they always had, and so they always would.

Upstairs again, Jack cradling the pages, there was a moment, pre-words, where they only looked at each other, and he wondered if maybe they were post-words, post all the things that words could do.

“You fuck.” Wrong. Deb had words. “I could leave you for this. For less than this.”

She was still perched on the bed, and he didn’t yet dare sit next to her. “I know you can,” he said, easing gently into the rocking chair, trying to keep from swaying.

“Or I can stay, because, I don’t know, you want me to.”

“Of course I do.”

“No, you shut up. I’m not asking what you want. The point is I could, I could do the easy thing, or I could do the hard thing. I don’t even know which would be harder. Divorce? Do you know what a nightmare? And I
want
to be married. I got married because I want to be married, Jack. Why did you?”

“Because I love you.”

“You don’t get to love me right now. That you could sit there and tell me you hope I forgive you, that that—”

“I
do
hope.”

“God and I hate that you make me say this, these cliché things. People actually talk this way?”

There was a lot of talk after that, talk that led to nowhere, because it was not one of those problems that talking could fix, and so none of it came in any order they could remember, and all of it went on forever. At one point Deb definitely said, “Do you even know, how much I gave up for—this?” “This” meant “you,” and no, for worse or for better, no one could ever know that. And later, when she’d made herself sad: “I have a hard time believing it matters to you.” This was in response to the question: What did she want?

He said he would sleep at the studio, and she told him no. She didn’t want him in bed with her, but she didn’t want him out of the apartment either, leaving her to wonder where he’d gone.

“I’ll be in the living room then.”

This they hadn’t done before, slept in separate rooms, not even last winter, when she first found out. Jack took the saddest of the pillows—he would have dragged it behind him if it were long enough—and went out to the sofa to lie down.

It felt warmer than it had in the courtyard, warm enough to sleep with the windows open. Outside he could hear echoes of happy birthday to you from some rooftop garden or fire escape. Voices from faraway parties, somehow always female—because men were raised not to sing in public, not to really sing—reaching their apartment on the eleventh floor from however many buildings away.

How they met. At a party. “I almost left early,” she used to say. “And you almost stayed home.” Would it have made a difference? Would they have met some other way? He knew she’d liked thinking about it. The way we met, the way we were. He told her he was married. His wife? No, his wife wasn’t there. Didn’t like parties. She arched her back at him and asked about his work. Strappy black dress and dusky skin, sharp shoulder blades. They shared a cab home, nothing more. She stood under a canopy until the car pulled away and took the train to where she really lived. She had so wanted to be on his way.

He heard from her a week later. She wanted to meet somewhere and talk. Just talk. His marriage was not exactly well. He let her press her knees against him under the table.

She began visiting the studio downtown. To see how it was done. She took off her underwear and sat for him. “I am married,” he told her. She said to sculpt her with his hands.

They spent afternoons in her apartment. He could feel the power in her young legs when they were wrapped around him, reminding him that, if she wanted, she might never let him go. Like a horse but in a good way, good teeth and hair and strong seeming. Her breasts could barely fill a martini glass, but in his hands or in his mouth they felt like enough. He made her sit across the room from him and touch herself. It never affected his work. Impressive even to himself that he could keep them separate. The work existed on some higher plane. With his head between her legs, he thought about form, the shapes of things.

That one day he walked in and found her crying, he didn’t have cause to think it was any different from the other times she’d cried. And when she told him why, he thought, isn’t this what you wanted? Or maybe he didn’t think it; maybe he said it out loud, from the way she started shouting and the way he heard himself apologize and the way he held her after.

Seven months later Simon was born.

And now Simon, this person they’d made, this Simon wouldn’t talk to him. Deb had been right about that. The next morning Jack, in his T-shirt and underwear, sat up in the living room, pillow cool across his thighs, waiting, and when Simon finally did come, it was not to his father but to the door, to leave. He was dressed already, backpack on both shoulders, like an armadillo.

Deb followed behind him. “Are you sure you don’t want me to zap them?”

“I like them like this.” Simon smacked a foil packet against his palm.

“It’s so early,” she said.

“I told you, I’m meeting somebody. We’ve got a presentation thing first period.”

From the couch Jack offered something short of a wave, almost a salute, and his son’s eyes flew to him but then away; he wouldn’t look.

Deb followed the boy out, saying tiny things Jack couldn’t hear. She stood in the hall while Simon waited for the elevator. From his spot on the couch, Jack could see her arms rise over her head and tense in stretch. She clasped her hands behind her head, elbows forward, and maybe she was whispering something. With everything lifted like that, her long sleep shirt became almost inappropriate for the hall. As a dancer she’d never been shy about her body, which was narrow and less tall than it seemed. Sometimes Jack thought it would do to be a little shy about it with the kids. His children would never see him walking around like that. But it was different, too, with men.

There was the chime and warble of the elevator, then the clack and near echo of both locks snapping shut. Jack watched Deb walk back toward the kitchen and did not expect her to stop, which she did.

“I have nothing to say to you,” she told him. In a way, good news. Like saying,
No, I can’t hear you,
or,
Yes, I’m sleeping.
Jack even smiled a little.

Deb bent forward, resting her hands on her kneecaps. “Are you crying?”

Was he? Well, he was smiling a little and crying a little, too. Surprising, to find his eyes wet. He blinked hard and squeezed out a tear. It wasn’t a bad thing, to cry. If there was ever a time besides funerals, it was now, here. She looked into his face, and he held it out to her, open as he could make it, hoping to be solved by her. Whatever fix she found, it was important she think it her own.

He began to imagine that she was waiting for him to blink, so he tried not to, and his eyes watered more. She released the sight of him and walked to the kitchen. Jack pulled on his pants and went after her.

Kay was at the sink, her penguin pajamas rolled to the knees, using a spoon to strain extra water from a bowl of instant oatmeal. There were eggs on the counter in pink Styrofoam, and Deb began cracking them into a mug. Use a glass, Jack wanted to tell her. Easier to check for shells.

What he saw of the future, the next few weeks at least: His wife would fight with him, really just yell, because who can fight with a spineless thing? A misshapen, regretful thing that curls up and sleeps with white flags waving like windshield wipers. She’d get sick of yelling, of crying. When she cried, Kay cried, Simon cried. They’d speak to him only when his physical presence was an impediment, when he was blocking the refrigerator and they needed him to move. And then they’d be overpolite.

“Excuse me, please,” said Kay, and he let her by for the milk.

For a time, they’d live this way.

Back in the living room, he thumped his bare feet into shoes, pushed his head and arms through the same neck- and armholes as yesterday. When he closed the door, he did it quietly. He pushed for the elevator and watched his face in the hall mirror. He rubbed his cheeks, which felt porous and muggy. He rubbed enough that some oily bits of skin rolled up under his fingers. The elevator came, and Jack felt the bulk of his wallet in his back pocket. He would keep out of the house during the day. Officially, because Deb would want Simon and Kay to wake up and come home to what she called
a neutral space.
But he would have gone anyway. He didn’t know how to face them, his kids.

Ballet III began at 1:10 in the Barnard Hall Dance Annex two days a week. Deb watched in the mirror as the girls trickled in, clinging to each other and giggling. These past few weeks their arrival could be timed by the sun, the hour it chose to angle itself through the high windows, warming the dark floor and bouncing off the corner mirrors. College girls, some carried their leftover lunches with them, salads in plastic bowls.

Deb set Delibes spinning on the stereo. “Legs turned out. Keep them out,” she called, walking down the aisles of them. She saw her presence recorded in ripples where she passed, backs straightening, chins lifted a little higher. “Nice. That’s good.”

A joke to try and do both, college and ballet. With modern dance you could, maybe. Five years of teaching, and not one of her graduates was still dancing. Not that they kept in touch. She liked the girls, they seemed like such good girls, but she never let them get close. She had the best résumé on faculty—City Ballet spelled success—and so her classes were always full. But she knew her reputation: accomplished, chilly.

“Okay, now remember your legs. Turn. No twisting.”

Sometimes they asked about Isabel Davey. Did she know her? A little.

Deb and Izzy were at SAB together. They entered the corps the same season, danced the same shows. They shared an apartment in Chelsea before it became expensive and climbed the ranks together, though Izzy climbed higher and faster and, unlike Deb, never broke. When Deb quit, she was about to turn twenty-seven, and
we all have to quit sooner or later.
But Izzy was still dancing. She’d grown a career as old as Simon, and she was a star now—her name appeared in bold type now.

“That’s good, Hannah. And, arms arabesque.” The girls lacked form, discipline. Even the few who’d shown promise as first years, the serious and naturally turned out, were worsening. That was why Deb kept her distance. She corrected their arms, tapped together their heels, but rarely did she learn where they were from, what dorm or what state, and when they asked her advice, she had a hard time meeting their gazes. To encourage them would feel like a lie, because really, she didn’t approve, wanted to whisper in their ears:
Quit now.
Better off spending their time in economics or history, pre-med, pre-law, pre-anything. To watch them try depressed her. They’d compromised, with their families, with themselves, their ambition. They had lives outside these rooms. Whereas when Deb met Jack, she was virgin enough to still be proud she wasn’t one.

She’d known since Christmas, when they’d gone to see Jack’s mother and stepdad in Houston. Their last day, while Charles was showing model trains to his not-quite grandchildren in the attic and Phyllis was popping tubes of crescent rolls in the kitchen, Deb listened to Jack hold half a conversation on the other side of the bathroom door. Half had been enough. She raised her arm and hit the door three times, hard, not with her fist but the flat of her hand, like a POW tapping out code, blows that echoed in the quiet wood after. There was a pause, and when Jack opened the door her eyes were hot but there wasn’t time to scream or say anything, because there was Phyllis, her hands in a dish towel, asking if something had dropped.

In Houston, then, Deb hadn’t been able talk to him. Her anger became unspeakable in that house where Jack was everywhere, in picture frames, in mirrors. She’d excused herself from dinner, citing a headache, and in so doing found it was true: Her head did hurt. Then on the plane home, they sat apart, their seats two and two. Only when they were home could she tell him, with perfect calm, to get the hell out.

But by then Jack too had had time to prepare, and his counter was a triumph, deft in just the way she should have known it would be. He had been immediately grateful. Thank God she’d found him out, to shepherd him from all he had already come to regret. He’d been on a wild horse, and she’d lassoed him in. Thank you, Deb, for saving us.

That night, he answered the questions she wished she didn’t have. Questions made it seem like the answers could matter, if they were the right ones. Still, there were things she couldn’t help wanting to know. Do you love her? (No.) How long has it been? (Less time than you think, but too long.) And you’ll give it up? (Yes, I will, yes.) How’d it start? (She’s a kid. She just wanted to talk to me.) When did you know you would? (I didn’t, honestly. I never meant to.)

She tongued the corner of her mouth where she could feel a cold sore coming. “Arabesque now. Reach.”

Deb envied everyone. She envied Izzy and she envied these girls, looking to her now out of the corners of their eyes, gripping the barre, their arms bent in fourth position. They had no idea yet how old they were in the dance world, just as Deb, at their age, had had no idea how young she was in the real one. At twenty-two and twenty-three, at parties with regular people, nondancers—they’ll coo over you like a rare bird. Which you are, to them. You are sinewy grace and bone, everywhere tight, from your tied hair to your pointed toes. And you’ll feel yourself a liar there too, because in the corps you are one of so many. Your own mother needing binoculars to pick you out. The only time Deb didn’t feel like a ballerina was at the theater. That’s the rude surprise. Like your father used to say, a pinhead in the crowd.

“Good, ladies. Again.” She thought they had so little in common, yet here she was, in the room with them.

Was it after a fight, or some night I said I was too tired? (No, Deb, no, don’t do that to yourself. Who knows anymore?) Were there others? (Nothing, nothing that mattered.) How many? (It doesn’t matter.) How many, a number. (I don’t know.) What is it you do with them that you can’t do with me? (It’s nothing like that, Deb. There’s no comparison. I don’t compare them—Hey, don’t—what, Deb, Debby, shh.)

The period did somehow pass, and as class was ending, Deb’s cellphone rang. It was an unknown number, and she didn’t want to answer it, but that was the thing about having kids.

“I don’t get it—you never call, never write. You get my email?”

“How are you, Gary.” Gary was Jack’s old roommate from the Rhode Island School of Design. There was the long-told story of how they met their first year in an experimental film class. Gary had nudged Jack awake during a screening of Brakhage’s
Mothlight,
which was actually a mass of insect wings taped together and run through as a filmstrip.
Now I know what life is like for a bug zapper,
Jack had said.

“I’m good.” Gary was always good. “I’m just looking at my calendar, thinking of making it down to the house.” The two men had bought a ramshackle house together while they were still in school, a fixer-upper where they both could paint and Gary could go fishing. Gary had since married and divorced a wealthy woman, and then another wealthy woman, and lived mostly alone now, mostly in Boston, halfheartedly selling real estate. In the summers he was always trying to get them out to Jamestown, to the vacation he was always on.

“It’s just been a little crazy these days.”

“I know, Jack’s opening coming up!” Gary had left the art world, or it had not come to him, but still he liked to keep track. “He nervous?”

“Listen, can I call you back?” Behind her the girls were filing out, texting, eating their salads. They shoveled leaves into their wide-open mouths like brontosauruses, or was it brachiosauruses.

“Real quick—I tried your husband.”

“Oh?” Though it wasn’t unusual these days for Jack to ignore Gary’s calls. At some point the history between the two men had hardened.

“Left a voice mail, I know he hates those. Anyway, would you tell him I said good luck? Good luck with the show.”

“Why don’t you try him again? He should be at the studio.”