Martin Sloane (4 page)

You mean, you haven’t yet.

That’s right. It’s been clear sailing, so far, believe it or not. We laughed. I actually forget what we talked about after that. It disturbs me that I could have lost even five minutes of that first evening, that there is no witness to it. That’s the marrow of all our stories: the forgotten moments that could make everything clear to our future selves (who are also busily losing the present). But I do remember that at one point — I see empty plates in front of us — he said, You’ll understand what I mean one day. You mean, when I’m all grown up?

He held up a hand in surrender. No, no, I didn’t mean it like that.

Are you actually worried you could offend me?

Well, I don’t want to end up sleeping outside.

That could turn out to be good luck for you, I said and turned scarlet, reaching for my wine.

After that, I can see his face, warmed from the heat of the wine, can hear the music filtering through the little room from speakers at the front. The way the room thinned out as the night went on. He was just fine with words. He talked of old packaging and cartoons and how people made early photographs; he talked about automata and magic apparatuses, the old belief of the sphere-within-sphere universe, which was the model of the cosmos that still appealed to him most.

Concentric worlds, he said. Easier to keep track of everything. I pictured those glassy spheres in the palm of his hand, and me in the smallest one at the very centre. Curled up in the warmth generated throughout the celestial realms by his hands.

It was late when I got us back to Obreshkove House, and the roads between towns had been so dark that we were driving through the stars. Martin hadn’t seen a sky like that since before he’d moved to Toronto and he opened his window and leaned his head against the bottom of it to watch them.

I carried his bags into Molly’s room and left them on the floor. We stood in the space between the two bedrooms. Do you need anything? I asked.

No. I’m fine. He cruised along the bookshelves, stopping and tilting his head here and there. You read a lot of poetry.

You don’t?

He searched my face. Why does it feel there’s a right answer to that question?

Someone like you would appreciate poetry. It’s one of those things that seems to have made it out of the past. You know what I mean?

His face brightened. Did you hear that someone caught a coelacanth in Lake Ontario?

A what?

It’s a fish, he said. An extinct fish. Someone caught one and now they’re not extinct anymore.

I’m sorry, I said, but I think I fell asleep for the half-hour there when we made the transition from poetry to fish.

You said poetry feels like it shouldn’t have survived, and yet it has.

Mmm, I said. Something hidden in the deep.

Yes.

A fossil record.

We stood there smiling at each other. An old language dusted off for use among people again. He turned back to the shelves, browsing the thin collections. Then glanced sidelong at me. Did you want to go to bed?

My stomach flipped. Uh, god, I said, flustered. I leaned forward to try to catch his expression, but he was squinting at something. I don’t know, Martin …

That’s fine, it’s —

He just looked at me, smiling vacantly.

I led him into the hall, reaching blindly for the light switch as I passed it, flicking it and dropping the apartment into darkness and then I pushed forward into him, tilting my mouth up toward him, and brushed my lips across his. My heart in my throat as I fumbled for the door to the bedroom. We stood there in the threshhold of it, me pressing my mouth to his, his face cupped in my hand, and feeling him … what? You can kiss me, I said quietly, but he remained immobile, as if the touch of my mouth had turned him to stone. What’s the matter?

It’s just …

Oh god!
I stepped away from him in horror. You meant did I want to
sleep
. It’s
late
, do I want to go to
bed
, I must be
tired
. Oh
fuck!

Jolene, he said, his voice tight.

Please don’t be laughing.

I’m not.

Turn on a light.

No, he said. Just, let’s …

Oh god, oh god, oh god —

We stood there in the dark, the sound of my heart hammering against my shirt the only disturbance. I was certain we could both hear it, like Poe’s murderer hearing the heart under the floor. I’d had more than my share of exquisite humiliations before, but never with someone I’d actually liked. I imagined myself hurtling through a window.

I’m a complete idiot, I murmured.

No, no.

It’s okay. I knew it was just a matter of time before I said something dumb.

I would never have just come out and asked you like that.

I’m not that kind of person.

I know. You’re
decent
. I tried to say it like it was an appalling thing to discover about a person, especially at a time like this. I heard him laugh softly.

I don’t want you to think that I —

It’s okay, Martin. I probably
should
go to bed. Before I accept an erroneous marriage proposal or something.

Now he laughed out loud and surprised me by gathering me into him and holding me. Come on, he said. Why don’t we stay up awhile and talk? I don’t want you to think —

We’ll talk in the morning, I said, pushing away. It’s fine. Honest. I felt for the doorknob again, and turned it and slipped into the room. Then stood there on the other side of the door, my face burning, my
hair
burning, and stayed utterly still. It took me a moment longer to realize I hadn’t even shut myself up in the right room: Martin’s bags were at my feet.
Stupid girl! Stupid stupid girl!
I felt nauseous with embarrassment, knowing I’d have to show my face again, to go to the door beside this one. I could hear he hadn’t moved either.
Martin
… I whispered,
what are you doing?

I’m standing here.

Uh-huh.

I feel bad.

You
feel bad.

You just took me by surprise, Jolene. It doesn’t mean…. He didn’t finish the sentence.

What? What?

He didn’t know how to put it.
I would never have just come out and said it like that
. How
would
he have put it? I put my mouth to the door and spoke quietly. Is this a no-good-with-words moment, Martin?

Mm, he said.

I opened the door and stood square in front of him. I don’t want to have a fling. That would be disgusting and I don’t want people to talk. I already like you a lot.

Me too.

I stood there for a moment more shaking my head. My eyes had adjusted to the dark, and I could see his face in the faint greyness of the apartment, like something being reeled in from the depths. I didn’t want to risk a change of venue. I went and lit a candle at Molly’s bedside. She was one for candles, said it gave a tinge of intimacy to one-night stands. I hoped it wouldn’t be bad luck for me. I sat on her bed, and watched Martin slowly come over in the yellowy glow of the candle’s light, his face planes of shadow. He sat beside me and I felt his fingers touch down on mine. We sat there and held hands.

Is this more your speed? I stared out into one of the darkened corners of the room, already tired out.

Yes, thank you. Don’t be embarrassed, Jolene.

Me? Embarrassed?

It’s nice to know when someone wants to be with you, he said. It stops a person from worrying.

And you were worrying.

I would have. It hadn’t occurred to me yet.

Thanks.

I
do
like you, Jolene. I liked you from your letters. I didn’t know if it was going to be okay to tell you that.

Martin, my head’s exploding.

I wanted to feel a certain way when I came here.

How?

Welcome.

I pulled his hand up to my mouth and kissed it. Thank you, I said. That’s a good way to put it. You are. I held his hand against my chest. And I’m glad we finally made it through that door. But I have to tell you, I said, I’m feeling
way
unsexy right now.

That’s only because an old fool almost ruined your evening. Not because you’re not sexy. He leaned down and kissed me underneath the ear. Okay?

Okay, I said, but I don’t think I actually made a sound.

We lay under the covers, drowsing. I pressed my face against his neck and breathed him in. He didn’t really have a scent, at least not a scent I expected, the pleasantly sour smell of men, with its salt and flesh. He smelled like rain, like clean laundry. Even after lovemaking he gave off nothing, left no path in the air. I closed my eyes against his cool skin and almost fell asleep, but he began to hum. Turned to me and opened his mouth and began singing quietly in a croaky voice.
When day is done and shadows fall, I dream of you, Da da da da, da da da da, the joys we knew.

I’m sure that’s not how it goes, I said.

He caught the loose end of the song trailing past and started singing louder. That yearning returning to hold you in my arms, Won’t go love, I know love, Without you night has lost its charms!

I reached up from under the covers and gently pinched his mouth. Most people just smoke, I said. I released his lips. You can tell me what that was, though.

“When Day is Done.” The story is, at night, he misses her. We don’t know the same songs, do we?

The barbershop quartets don’t come to town that often.

He grinned and shut one eye, pained. We’ll have to cross-pollinate.

Really.

I took him back to the bus station when the weekend was over, and we stood outside in a light drizzle, and were mute. I hadn’t told him yet that I’d lost my virginity to him; I felt embarrassed that I had even considered it important, but it seemed the kind of thing you should tell a person. In the end, I didn’t know how to put it, and said nothing. (When I did tell him, more than a year later, he was aghast that I hadn’t warned him beforehand. What would you have done, I asked him. I don’t know, he said, I would have wanted to mark it somehow. You mean an ad in the paper? No, he said, serious. It’s just sad when something important goes by and no one notices …)

The bus pulled in and he took my hands. You haven’t asked if there’s anyone in my life.

I didn’t want to know. Is there?

I’m hopeful.

I smiled and kissed him. I guess I’m sealing my fate, I said.

When I got home, Molly was pulling the sheets off her bed, and we stood staring at each other through her doorway.

Sorry, I said, looking at the bedclothes.

Sorry? I’m having them framed!

Martin and I spent most of our early weekends meeting in other spots around the state. I taught him to drive. I showed him how my father liked to hold the steering wheel, with his hands at the bottom, the wheel lying in his palms. Driving in a relaxed pose like that induced my father to make a sound I used to find strangely soothing: it was the sound of his ring tapping against the steering wheel. Just an occasional, light
tick
. It was sometimes the only sound on the way home from a dinner somewhere, driving back through Ithaca, or Letchworth, or Albany. A reassuring sound that there was someone awake in the car, watching over you.

Click your ring against the wheel, I said.

Martin looked over at me, confused. Why?

I like the way it sounds.

Tick
. And again,
tick.

I thought I’d want to share him with my friends, but we instead retreated to privacy, opening our stories over suppers and walks, incubating an intimacy I began to guard like someone with knowledge of a diamond trove. He’d gone some time without a woman in his life, a result of having his nose in his work. And also a general confusion about what women his age wanted (he said, as a group, they seemed worried). As a result, he hadn’t gone on a date in over a decade, and his last dates were convincing disasters.

On these first weekends, on our travels, we’d stop in little towns, read the grave markers for the revolutionary soldiers. Martin would go into the Woolworths or the dusty little corner stores and come out with his triumphant purchases: a book of cut-out animals, a pack of soap-bubble pipes, a die-cast milkmaid carrying her pails, an old velvet ring box with a stain of tarnish on the inside and no ring. Or else a paper bag filled with lemoncream snacking cakes (which he could live on), a fragrant peach at the bottom for me. He’d make me things from what he found. The milkmaid ended up in the ring box: you lifted the lid to find her lying on a bed of hay, the pails and the iron bar removed, so she lay there, succulent, her arms outstretched as she awaited her lover. The animals from the mobile were pasted on the inside edges of the box: lion, otter, viper, elephant.

Strange assortment of beasts for a barn, I said.

They’re code.

I stared at it until I figured it out. Then dragged him to the floor, out of view of the windows. Maybe this was in Albany. Maybe that beautiful inn we found at Allen’s Hill. I look back now and that life seems like pins in the map I was making.

We spent the rest of the summer and into the fall living like this. And I’d come back to campus full of the stories of an increasingly exotic life, pulling out a new artwork made for me, or increasingly, as time went on, keeping it to myself. To our friends, Molly and I started to seem like different people, like we’d moved up with the juniors. We stayed in Obreshkove over the summer, and in the fall, with many of our sophomore year moved on to other dorms, or even other universities, we became the grand dames of the house, treated with a kind of distant fear or respect. I’d leave on Friday and she’d have the place to herself for whatever recent conquest was going to take up her weekend. (To her credit, some lasted longer than a weekend, but rarely did they go as long as three or four.) Our Sunday nights were spent decoding our weekends, flopped on the sofa in our gowns, smoking cigarettes and eating the sandwiches no one ever requested. So we’d sit, sometimes with a glass of wine, going over what had been said, what it meant, new revelations, sensual progress. My stories were of going down one road, and hers were of detours. Mine, constancy; hers, change.