Love Love (35 page)

“Have you ever walked a labyrinth?” Denise asked.

She stood in front of the arch and shook her arms loose, raised and lowered her shoulders like a runner. In the distance, a church bell rang, and a neighbor was probably doing the laundry, as Kevin caught a whiff of artificial freshness in the air.

“There's no right or wrong way to do this, but the point is to follow the path, get to the center, then follow the path back out. First thing is to focus at the entrance, to become quiet and centered. I like to bow, to give acknowledgment to what the structure offers us.”

“I'm not much of a spiritual person,” he said.

“Neither am I.” She curled and uncurled her toes in the grass. “Every time I come here, I do this. It clears my head, sets me straight. You don't have to do it, but either way, you'll have to wait.”

He shrugged and removed his sneakers and socks. The grass here was more like the St. Augustine variety, harsh and stiff, but it still felt nice to be free of his shoes, closer to the earth.

Denise bowed, and Kevin stood behind her and did likewise.

“Remember, just walk. That's all you have to do. Some people ask a question before they start.”

“Do they hear a response?”

“If they're lucky,” she said, and she walked under the arch and over to the other side.

With the sun out in full, her silk blouse turned iridescent, glowing as if powered by electricity. He'd been so involved with his own situation that he hadn't even asked her how she felt about him coming into her life. Had she even known that he'd existed, or did Norman keep the knowledge of Kevin away from her until he was found? As he followed her slow, methodical steps around the curves of the stone-lined pathway, he chided himself for not being more empathetic, for being selfish. Oh, that word—his favorite word for Alice. Whenever there was something he wanted to do and she didn't, he'd accuse her of selfishness, while she'd counter with a call for mutual independence. Wasn't it better if they both got what they wanted instead of one person bending toward the will of the other, for the sake of forced togetherness? Shopping had been a frequent battleground, him wanting them to walk the aisles together like a normal couple, while she wanted to break away and do her own thing. Museums, too, where Alice preferred to take in the gallery at her own pace, encountering the works of art by herself instead of waiting for Kevin to finish.

Looking back, it seemed so incredibly stupid that they'd even argued about such inanity. But these evidences of their incompatibilities had a way of accruing. Even after it had been fully established that his threshold for mess was much lower than hers, ultimately, she never got neater for his penchant for order and he never became more accepting of her entropic inclinations. Neither was able to compromise, and it was just a matter of time until friction burned them.

But he loved her, still. How was that possible? It was more than just wanting her body, though he did want it, every inch of it, the firm curves of her breasts, the tensile sinews of her thighs, the soft sweetness of what lay in between. He loved to make love to her on a weekend morning, right after waking up, spooning leading to a lazy, slow sex that felt so right for both of them, riding the crests of their pleasures until they fit inside each other like an infinite set of Russian nesting dolls.

Then they would talk, just ordinary stuff like what was going on with the world, some annoying part of their jobs, the goofy TV show they watched the night before. Lying naked with his wife, chatting about the mundane: It was the epitome of comfort to discuss the leaky faucet in the kitchen or recaulking the tub in the upstairs bathroom. They were supposed to take care of each other, grow old together.
Maybe it would've helped if they had children like everybody else, but who really knew. He remembered the horror Judy went through with her miscarriage, how it had cast a shadow over her relationship with Brian from the get-go. No matter what, life was a minefield of failures and regrets.

Denise put out her hand to stop him from running into a bronze statue. He hadn't realized that he was in the eye of the labyrinth. It wasn't much to look at, a couple of shrubs in various states of struggle, a gray ceramic pot with a lid.

“Deep in thought, were we?” Denise asked.

“The labyrinth is doing its job.”

“Good. His name is Fred, by the way,” she said.

It was a happy, fat ceramic Buddha, sitting down with one knee up, a bunch of tots climbing all over him. He was fairly large, his shiny bald head coming up to Kevin's waist. “I didn't know Buddha had a first name. What's in the pot?”

Denise knelt down, lifted the lid, and removed a small notepad and a pen sitting on a bedding of folded pieces of paper.

“Some people jot down a secret. It could be something you want, something you're hoping for, almost like a wish list. Or maybe something you want to kick out of your life.” She offered the pad and pen to Kevin. “If you feel like it. I'm going to just stand here for a bit and pray with Fred.”

There were two large, flat stones flanking Fred, and Denise sat on one and Kevin on the other. The notepad was spiral-bound and opened from the top, like something reporters used in old movies. About half the sheets were gone, saw-toothed remnants of the ripped-out papers stuck in the tunnel of wire, evidence of the hopes and dreams and mysteries and pains of the people who came before him, who walked the same path he had just walked. It seemed like a useless thing to do, something that felt more like magic than logic, but at the same time, what was the harm in it? At the very worst, he'd be throwing his particular ideas into an anonymous pot, and that would be the end of it. He uncapped the pen and wrote:

             
I wish for happiness.

He read it over and instantly felt like a loser, and seeing the words in his own handwriting made it worse. How many others in that pot
asked for the same sad wish? Kevin was tempted to shove his hand in there and read a bunch, but instead he crossed it out and tried again.

             
I want to lead a meaningful life.

             
I want Alice.

             
But I can't have Alice.

             
I want to stop thinking about Alice.

             
I don't want to be who I am.

             
I don't want to live where I live.

             
I wish my mother were still alive.

             
I wish both of my moms were still alive.

             
I hope my father finds a kidney before it's too late.

             
I hope Judy is happy with her new relationship.

             
There seems to be so much wrong with my life right now, I don't know where to begin.

             
What am I doing here in this strange city, with these strange people? I'm nowhere closer to understanding anything, but I don't want to go home because

He flipped over the sheet.

             
there's nothing there for me, except my dog. I miss Snaps. I envy her. I envy my dog, probably too much and too often.

             
Everybody dies, everything ends. I'm forty years old. I'm at the halfway point, a place when most people have direction and stability. They have kids, families, jobs they can tolerate. I don't have any of those things, and I'm scared.

             
I'm fucking terrified.

             
And I don't know what to do about any of it.

             
How did I get here? And how do I get out?

Kevin was about to go over to the next sheet, but he stopped himself. He ripped it out of the notepad and savored the zip of tearing. He folded the paper twice to make a thin long piece, then folded the two ends in opposite directions and brought them together to lock them in a knot. He tossed it onto the pile in the pot, then closed the lid with the pen and pad inside.

“You're done writing your novel?” Denise said, peeking around Fred.

“My hand hurts.”

“You look good. You look alive.”

She led the way out of the labyrinth, and he thought of absolutely nothing but the steps he was taking, the brush of grass underneath his feet, the sparks in the stones, the fading perfume of the laundry. By the time they were out, it was almost four and noticeably chillier.

“Now that we've detoxified our souls, it's time for the tour.” She grabbed his hand and took him through what looked like a small loading dock that led to the kitchen.

It was a large kitchen, big enough to run a small restaurant. But instead of having industrial-size equipment, they had two of everything: two white fridges side by side in the pantry, two gas ranges and ovens, two islands pushed together in the middle of the space. Nothing matched, the appliances most likely donations, but everything was clean and neat.

“We take turns cooking.” She picked up a crusted pan on the island and added to the mountain of pots in the sink. “We take turns cleaning up. Some are better at it than others.”

“Ugh, you're like one of the shoemaker's elves,” a voice said behind them. Even though she was wearing a baggy, faded Pink Floyd
Dark Side of the Moon
T-shirt, there was no hiding her enormous chest. “Always cleaning up whenever you walk in here.”

“Angeles, meet Kevin, my brother,” Denise said.

Although she could pass for a college student, the way she held herself suggested otherwise. Her cool blue eyes shined behind a film of hardness.

“Are you good or bad?” Angeles asked.

It was a strange question, but being with Claudia had given him plenty of practice. “Depends on the day.”

“I like that answer, brother of Denise.”

Three other women came in soon after, and as soon as Kevin was introduced to each of them, he forgot who was who. Amber and Susan and Stacy were facsimiles of one another, a trio of stacked blondes with big smiles and long legs, each wearing tight shirts and short shorts, as if they'd leaped out of a beer commercial. They were girls, probably barely old enough to legally drink, but even these nubile beauties carried a shadow of fatigued knowledge, like young war veterans who'd come home after their tour of duty. They were here to clean up because it was their turn to do so, according to the chart on the corkboard hanging off the wall. There was a column for
kitchen
, which included subcolumns for cooking, waiting, dishes, pots and pans, and floor. Then a column labeled
bathroom
, dividing the duties for the three and a half baths in the house, a footnote attached to each one, referencing a laminated sheet pinned underneath the chart that detailed the required steps to deem the task complete.

“You did this?” Kevin asked Denise.

“I'm a woman of many talents.”

“You should work at my tennis club.” He flipped past the current month's assignments and compared it to December's. “Half of my time is taken up formulating lineups for the leagues. People always complain I don't vary their opponents enough.”

Denise held the swinging door open for him, which led into the dining room. It looked like a time portal to the '70s, warped wood veneers on the walls, the trim painted in a psychedelic shade of Yellow Submarine. Like the kitchen, the dining room was a collection of mismatched castaways. Six tables were pushed together into a U shape, and sitting around them were wooden and wrought iron and metal folding chairs of all sizes and shapes and colors. There was even a pair of white plastic patio chairs at the end.

“It's a work in progress.” Denise walked down one side and pushed the chairs in to their rightful places. “I'm doing everything I can to raise money, but it's tough in this economy.”

Kevin followed her lead and neatened the opposite side. “I imagine it's not easy, trying to get philanthropists to throw money your way.”

“Not exactly the sort of business that Bill Gates wants to get involved with. Though I bet you my last dollar that Bill has seen his share of girl-on-girl action.”

The dining room led to a four-way intersection: a meeting room to the left, a TV room ahead, and stairs to the right. The meeting room must've been a library at some point, with built-in bookshelves on all four walls, but now it looked like a place of congregation, with couches along the sides and chairs lined up like a wedding, leading up to the wide, cafeteria-style table beneath the trio of windows that looked out onto the weedy yard. Two men sat at the table, playing cards.

“Fresh meat?” one of the guys asked Denise.

His name was Tony, a name he shared with his younger counterpart. They were the only two male residents right now, and neither of them looked like what Kevin imagined porn actors to be. Old Tony
was a dead ringer for Jackie Gleason, and Young Tony was so thin that Kevin wondered if he was suffering from an illness.