Distortions (25 page)

As they eat she explains that tomorrow, Friday, she’ll be late. She’s taking care of Paula’s children tomorrow night so she can have a night out—picking them up at nursery school after work. Paula is a girl she works with. He knows that. He nods vigorously
to dismiss the explanation. Actually, he doesn’t like conversation at dinner. The food she prepares is so delicious, so delicate. He doesn’t want to be distracted.

She is always too tired to go out after the day of work, so they stay home at night. He stays in too much. She mentions it to him. Does she want to go out? He misunderstands. She meant that he should go out during the day. He does; he shops for food every day. Yes, but she didn’t mean it so literally; she meant he should do something that wasn’t an errand. It’s such a beautiful time for the park. She is enthusiastic, but wouldn’t want to be sitting in a park in autumn herself. Only work has seemed real to her since she began her job. She feels sorry for him—browsing in aisles of imported food, sitting on a bench by the fountain. The fluorescent lights in her office excite her. The wide, shining hallway gives her a sense of purpose.

By arrangement, they work alternate years. Last year he was a house painter. He was very good at it, and he made quite a bit of money. Before that, she was a waitress at a private club. She got good tips. She had nothing against that job. But this job—it amazes her that she could have been so wrong in thinking that working in an office would be depressing. She likes this even better than waitressing. She was more tired when she was a waitress, she thinks with satisfaction.

She finds herself in the parking lot, a whole day gone. What happened in the period between sitting at the dinner table and now, when she is walking across the parking lot? She’s left work a little early, dutiful about picking up Paula’s children. Usually she has to be alert walking through the parking lot, but tonight she’s left earlier than the other drivers. Other people, already in their cars and as tired as her, back up without looking carefully. She would have been hit last week if she had not shrieked. She was nowhere near the man’s car, but as he pulled out he swung backwards in an arc … she remembers putting her arms out, as though that would stop the car. The cry she gave stopped it.

She parks at the back of the lot because there’s less chance of the car being hit there. They fight for places at the front. Let them. She wonders, as she puts the key in the lock to open the car
door, what people do about finding their car when they’re color blind. It’s her car’s color she rivets her eyes to. She moves toward the bright, bright red. There are a lot of VW’s in the lot that look like hers. Sometimes there are three in a row, even back here. They must look in the window, she thinks a little giddily. People keep so much junk in their cars.

Paula’s children are glad to see her. They’ve met her twice before. They’re very glad to see her. Three-and four-year-old children get nervous about any deviation from their routine, even when they’ve been told what to expect. She feels sorry for them—particularly the three-year-old—and kids around with them. It’s only nervousness that makes them so glad she’s there, but she’s flattered anyway.

He entertains the children while she fixes dinner. She makes a formal meal for the four of them, as though they are honored company: beef stroganoff, fresh lima beans, salade niçoise. The children love it. They’ve never eaten by candlelight. The older one is confused and wants to know if it’s Halloween. She went a little light on the burgundy in the sauce because of the children, but compensated for it beautifully with a sprinkle of sage. He looks at her across the table. She can tell by his smile that he’s grateful she didn’t fix fried chicken, or something children supposedly like. The oldest child asks what the salad is. “Salade niçoise,” she tells her, and details the ingredients. He pays as close attention as the child. Being a good cook himself, he appreciates this.

It is Saturday, and his friend Sam is visiting. Sam has separated from his wife and visits more often now. Jim and Sam always invite her to go out with them, but she doesn’t feel like tagging along. They don’t make her feel that way, she makes herself feel that way. By now they’re so used to her staying that they don’t expect an excuse. She’s happy Jim is getting out of the apartment; ever since he quit painting he’s stayed close—just going out for food and sometimes, but not often, a walk before bed. When they leave the apartment it seems suddenly as though space is opening up around her. It’s still such a small apartment, though: you walk into the living room, and if you turn right you’re in the bedroom,
and if you turn left there’s a small hallway with a bathroom and a kitchen at the end of it. The kitchen is really too small—the other rooms are an adequate size, except that she feels cramped when anyone besides the two of them are in the apartment. He thinks of moving, somewhere where there will be a larger kitchen, so she can work better. It’s too much trouble to move, so she insists she can move freely in the kitchen. She takes a look at the kitchen; it’s a bright, functional room, much too small. The living room is small, too. And the bedroom. She paces the apartment, then grabs a jacket and goes out, catches a bus and goes shopping. There’s no sense in spending her day off feeling closed in. At the store she buys a little bottle of perfume that the salesgirl tells her smells autumn-y. The salesgirl has long fingernails painted pale orange. Her fingernail polish sparkles as she hands her the bag. Her smile is bright as well.

Sam comments on the perfume at dinner. She is glad that he doesn’t say it smells like autumn, but only that it smells good. He takes her wrist in his hand for a second to sniff it. Sam has always been a little in love with her. She would like him anyway, because he is a nice person, but she likes him a little more because she knows about his secret love. They talk a little about his wife. She thinks he’s secretly in love with his wife as well. She doesn’t like his wife; she’s the sort of woman who gives in to everything: she eats too much and is overweight, she thinks too hard and is always dissatisfied, turning all conversations to politics and the state of the country. She was never pleasant to have to dinner. A little embarrassed that he’s talking about his wife again, Sam closes off with a bit of flattery: “And she wasn’t as good a cook as you.” They are eating a roast beef dinner. Baked stuffed potatoes. Very American—Sam’s favorite kind of food. She likes to cook what people particularly like; it makes everything more pleasant. And sure enough, Sam isn’t feeling blue any more when they’ve finished eating.

Late that night they go to a little restaurant for French pastry and espresso. She could have served that at home, but Sam likes to take them out—he feels a little guilty that he can’t reciprocate any more. When Jim goes to the men’s room Sam speaks hurriedly. She didn’t expect that at all—was there an undercurrent all
night she didn’t catch? Sam says that he is worried about Jim. Jim doesn’t go out much, and he seems at loose ends now that he isn’t working. Sam laughs, a little embarrassed, sensing, no doubt, her surprise at all this hurried talk. “I don’t want
everybody
to fall apart,” he says. Then he asks outright if their arrangement is that Jim can’t work when she works. No—he could if he wanted to. It’s just that he doesn’t have to. Sam seems confused by that. Or embarrassed. He says that it’s all none of his business. But then he speaks again, a question she can’t answer because Jim is walking toward them as he asks: “Wouldn’t it be better if he went back to work?”

Sam’s question nags at her. Back at work on Monday, she thinks about calling Jim. She’s busy, though, and forgets to do it, or else when she remembers the phone is in use. By five o’clock she feels differently. Sam meant to be helpful, but he misunderstood. She regrets wasting so much of her day thinking about what he said. She regrets the weekend, too—Saturday was wasted; she had felt vaguely depressed all day, and now she realizes that Sam was responsible. Not only what he said about Jim—or what he insinuated, really—but his presence, a reminder of what can happen to a marriage, the distressing realization that two adults who care about each other, as Sam and his wife do, can’t reach some agreement, have some arrangement that will make them both happy.

A car coasts along beside her. She recognizes the driver, a man she has spoken to several times in the elevator. “Parked all the way in the back?” he asks, and she tells him she is. She does what she knows is expected: she shrugs and looks a little perturbed about what everyone calls “the parking problem.” She’s sure that telling him she parks there deliberately would sound too preachy. So when he leans over and swings open the door on the passenger’s side, she has to get in. They drive up alongside her car in a minute—too short a time to start a conversation, he says. She agrees. And instead of getting out she sits there. She smiles, which is something she hasn’t done all weekend. During the next hour they have a conversation—in a bar. The conversation lasts about an hour, and then they go to a motel and go to bed. She thinks, then, of Jim—as she has most of the afternoon. She can’t think of
what to tell him, so she stays in the motel for another hour, thinking. Eventually they leave. He drives her back to her car. They smile again. This time there is no conversation, and she gets out.

He isn’t in the apartment when she gets back. She knocks and he doesn’t open the door. She imagines he’s sulking, so she rummages through her purse until she finds the key and goes in, ready to defend herself. He isn’t there. She looks for him like a dog searching for a missing bone, feeling foolish as she does it. Then she collapses in the chair. She falls asleep and is awakened by a key in the door. Jim looks terrible. Through the darkness of the room, and half asleep, she can tell that. He has a bag with him, which he sets on the floor by the chair. He smooths her hair. He tells her she looks tired. He has been out looking for shallots. It was his mistake to have slept away most of the afternoon, but who would think shallots would be impossible to find? He had to take the bus crosstown, and then he found them at that reliable specialty store next to the dry cleaner’s.

Even with the shallots, the trout does not taste very good to her.

The next day she doesn’t go to work. She gets up at seven-thirty, as usual, and dresses, but she parks at a downtown garage and goes shopping. For some reason, she’s still tired. She would have preferred to stay at home, but she didn’t want him to think anything was wrong, and she couldn’t say that she didn’t feel like going to work, because she had already told him how much she liked the job. She has no respect for women who say one thing one minute and another the next. She buys another bottle of perfume—a more expensive bottle—from the same salesgirl. She has been in the store several hours, going leisurely from department to department, when she realizes she hasn’t left a list of instructions for Jim. Has he called her office? Does he already know she isn’t there? In a panic, she asks a salesgirl where there is a telephone. She calls immediately. There’s no answer! What does that mean? Then she hears his voice. He’s been asleep. She’s lucky, because it’s late in the afternoon—two o’clock. She keeps her voice steady; she has called because she forgot to leave the list. “What did you want me to get?” he asks. Her mind goes blank. Finally she thinks
of something: lobster. And ground pork. Consomme. She will fix lobster in lobster sauce. “We had fish last night,” he says sleepily. He’s right; she’s forgotten even eating last night. She never makes a mistake in menu planning. He’s just pointed out an error; he knows she’s slipping … “But that sounds good,” he says. “Any spices we don’t have? Let me write this down.”

It is a delicious dinner. They eat earlier than usual because she’s so hungry. She didn’t want to eat lunch at the store, because it was just a cafeteria; it was too much trouble to move the car to go somewhere else. As she eats she concentrates, but still has no memory of having eaten dinner the night before. He sighs with contentment, spooning the rice onto his plate, ladling sauce over top of it. It is a particularly good dinner. She prepared it very slowly, with much care, fascinated herself by what she was doing.

She expects that he will be in her office waiting for her, but she doesn’t see him all that day. She walks up the stairs instead of taking the elevator. Eventually the fluorescent lights make her feel warm, and with the warmth comes calm. She works with accuracy and speed. The day is over before it begins. She feels real relief, walking down the stairs, that she has not had to see him. She knows men, and that is why she thought he would be standing in her office, waiting for her when she came in in the morning, but this time she has been wrong. As she starts her walk across the parking lot she begins to think of dinner. Some of the ingredients for this night’s dinner are a little hard to find out of season, and she hopes he has not had to take the crosstown bus again. She’s tired, and she knows what it is to exhaust yourself in a day.

Then she sees the car. Far in the distance, blocking her own car from view, yet she knows with certainty that her car is behind it. She walks more slowly. She tries to think, but nothing comes. Yes—it’s his car. She remembers the color. She remembers the make: a Pontiac. She remembers him, too, sees his face as clearly as she now sees the car, although he isn’t looking in her direction, but in front of him, down the lot. She’s almost close enough to touch him before he realizes she’s there. In fact, her hand does touch the glass. She stands there with her hand against his window until
he reaches across the seat and opens the door on her side. Then she gets into the car.

Tonight he has been unable to find fresh thyme. It is the first time he has ever failed. She makes the dinner without it, but it’s flat, lacking a certain delicacy of flavor. And he knows it, too, his palate as fine as hers. Neither of them eats much. The wine they have with the meal is very good. He has selected wisely. But the main course is a disappointment. He looks sad—eats listlessly, says little. He has failed.

After dinner she goes into the bathroom. The two little bottles of perfume are on a shelf. She takes them down and smells them, both much the same. With her eyes closed, slowly breathing in the aroma, she remembers the motel room, the ride, the hamburger she ate with him at a roadside stand. She had been very nervous coming back to the apartment, late again, but once more he hadn’t been there. He was hours late coming in, having searched everywhere for the thyme. And he was depressed not to have found it; he forgot to brush her hair. He sat in his own chair and said very little. Perhaps it is the memory of the hamburger-she never eats cheap food like that—or something about the strong smell of the perfume released in the small room that makes her sick. She is sick, vomiting in the bathroom for a long time before the sickness passes, and then she’s all right. He’ll say she has been pushing herself too hard, and that will start a whole discussion: moving to a larger apartment, his cooking dinners, everything. She goes into the living room to face it, but the room is empty. He has gone out for one of his infrequent walks.