The Life Room (35 page)

When he finished the performance he sat on his stool and stared at the audience, clearly enjoying the attention. He glowed. She saw how comfortable he was in the spotlight. After, he waited, expecting people from the audience to come up to him. One girl said, “Amazing performance.”

Eleanor sneaked out before he saw her.

“It’s you, isn’t it?” Eleanor said. She called him from her office the next day. “The boy in the story. I saw your performance. You were great.”

“You didn’t think I had it in me, did you? Why didn’t you see me after?”

“I liked being invisible. You’ve been around. There have been lots of girls, haven’t there? Lots of women.”

“There’s been no one, Eleanor. It’s all lies.”

“Then where does it come from? It has to come from somewhere.”

“It’s because I can’t. Don’t you get it? I write because I can’t. Why can’t I see you?”

“You know why.”

She opened the paper later in the week. She was drinking her coffee in her renovated kitchen with the Sub-Zero, steel cabinets, Viking range, and Italian tiles she and Michael picked together. On the first page of the arts section was an article about new venues for avant-garde readings in New York City. The reviewer had gone to the bar the night Stephen had performed. He called him a performance artist with a “chilling rawness.” “His words evoke the Alaskan landscape. He’s an existentialist, capable of pure poetry,” the reviewer said. There was a picture of him holding the microphone, almost indecently. It embarrassed her. He embarrassed her. He had nothing to do with the tiles in her kitchen. He had nothing to do with the integrity of her life. And yet, she felt elated for him, as if she’d been a part of his achievement. She sat in the kitchen for a half hour staring at the photo. She wanted to call someone and tell them to read the article in the
New York Times. He’s a nobody from Chicago, Illinois. He’s a boy I used to know. Isn’t it crazy?
But she said nothing. She told no one.

When she arrived in her office there was a message in her voice-mail box. “They want me to perform the novel as a one-man play. They read about it in the
New York Times
. It’s some club where they showcase new talent. She’s a genius, my agent. Can you believe this is happening, Eleanor?”

He had invaded her city, wandered through its streets, and even invaded her office. The
New York Times
piece had sparked interest. The media seemed captivated by Stephen and his performance. While taking a train to Princeton to give a talk, she heard him on NPR over her radio headset. The commentator asked him how much of the novel was his story. “It’s everyone’s story,” he said eerily.

“Do you really think we’re as alone as the character in your novel?” Terry Gross asked on
Fresh Air
.

“Loneliness is inevitable,” Stephen said. “It’s a force of nature.”

His gig was written up in the
New Yorker
’s “Talk of the Town.” In her graduate seminar the students were talking about him. “We went to hear this guy, someone Mason from Colorado, do this performance piece about Alaska at KGB. About a guy who is always running away from himself.”

Stephen, the flavor of the week.

The messages started again. “Eleanor, did you hear me on
Fresh Air?
Now it’s all about sustaining it. We have a publicist working on it. The
Tribune
is doing a story. Our mothers will see it. Are you with me, Eleanor? Are you following it?”

He called again at the end of the week when she was in her office. “I finally reached you,” he said, breathless. “You can’t imagine how hard it is. Not being able to call you at home. Not having you by my side through all this. Will you go to the club?”

“They’re calling you the Prince of Loneliness. Saying your work is about man’s inability to connect.”

“Isn’t it fabulous?” He paused. “Eleanor, is everything okay?”

“Everything’s fine,” she said.
The Prince of Loneliness
. She wanted to strangle him.

“You know that day, when we were in the park, before all this started? And you said you wanted something to happen?”

“Yeah.”

“I tried calling you back right after we said good-bye. But I missed you. I got your machine.”

“Why didn’t you leave a message?”

“I don’t know.”

“But you always leave messages. What did you want to say to me?”

“You’re married, Eleanor.”

“It’s only just dawned on you?” She looked out the window at the tree in front of her building, so ancient and formidable, its gnarled roots nearly popping out of the sidewalk. “I told you I can’t see you. I’m not trying to hurt you.”

“Everything is riding on this. This thing I’m doing in New York.”

“Why do you keep leaving me messages? What is it that you want from me? You’re the one who started this. I don’t understand what you’re saying to me,”

“You’re cute when you’re angry.”

“Don’t do that. I’m serious.”

“Meet me now,” he said.

On the way to his apartment she felt excited. She had on one of her sexiest skirts, with heeled sandals, bare legs, and a tight-fitting blouse. She made a point of not tying a sweater around her waist, or changing into flats, or pulling back her hair too tightly, as she sometimes did when she thought she looked too provocative. But when she arrived at his building, entered the lobby, and gave the doorman her name she felt uncomfortable, wanted to turn around and leave.

When he let her into his agent’s apartment where he was staying it looked as if no one lived there. It was a studio, with a galley kitchen in the living room. “She spends most of her time in Los Angeles,” Stephen had told her. “She keeps her studio for her clients.” In the living room was a black leather couch. By the window stood a steel table with an opened laptop on it. Next to it, a pile of papers and books. Behind the table was a steel refrigerator, on top were three cereal boxes—Raisin Bran, Special K, and Captain Krunch. She had the urge to put the cereal boxes in the refrigerator to keep them away from bugs.

“You like Captain Krunch? That’s Noah’s favorite cereal.”

“Noah?”

“My son.”

“You have kids. I haven’t even met your kids.” His face turned accusatory.

“You haven’t devoted that much time to my life. This has all been about you.”

“You haven’t exactly invited me over.”

“Did you want me to? Did you want to see Michael? Did you want to meet my boys? Would you like us to all have dinner?”

“We could have done it that way.”

“Is that what you wanted?” She sat down on the leather couch.

“I’m just saying that it could have happened.”

He sat down next to her and propped his feet on the coffee table. “It’s nice to sit next to you, Eleanor.”

She looked back at him with distrust. “Why are you being smug? You don’t want to be accountable. Is that why you’re doing this?” She was ready to walk out the door. She took her bag from the vestibule where she had left it. “I don’t know why I came.”

“Doing what? Is it a crime that I love spending time with you? Get back here,” Stephen said, as she opened the door. His mood seemed to lift. “I was just playing with you. I don’t want you to leave.”

“No, you weren’t. You were testing me.”

“Look at it from my side. You have everything and I have little or nothing to offer.”

“What exactly do you want from me?”

“You’re all I’ve been thinking about since the last time I saw you. I’ve replayed it a hundred times. Imagined the two of us together. I want it so badly, Eleanor. But it isn’t right. I couldn’t live with myself. All the other times I only thought about you. I wasn’t thinking about them. I see you in your office. I see you in Paris. I see how beautiful you are. And then I remember that it’s not just you. I can’t have it. None of it. That life is sealed off to me.”

She put her bag down and sat on the couch next to him. The back of her bare legs stuck to the leather, and it hurt when she lifted one leg to cross it over the other. She stroked his arm. “I understand. I know it’s hard.” She felt herself sinking into the couch and tried to realign herself. She was claustrophobic. It was dark in the room even though it was in the afternoon. It smelled damp and musty, the way apartments do when no one lives there. It was a studio for people in transit, for people who wandered in and out of the city, tempting others with their aloneness. She felt uncomfortable in her heels and skirt.

He turned his body around to face her. “Can I hold you? I’ve wanted to. It’s all I’ve dreamed about.”

She put her arms around him. He held her tightly. She thought about kissing the back of his neck, but she resisted. She was trembling. He pulled back to look at her. He turned to her and kissed her, but it wasn’t the kiss she remembered. His lips were stiff. He couldn’t let go. She had thought about kissing him at least a hundred times since they’d parted in Paris. She imagined it as something with heft and power. But her fantasy did not match the reality of his hard, anxious lips, his inability to allow her to penetrate him. When she looked into his eyes they were not the eyes she remembered. Where was his thick boyhood hair? His innocence? Why was he holding back?

“I can’t do this.” He stood up and walked over to the galley kitchen and stood in front of the sink and looked at her.

“Do what?”

“I can’t be with you.”

In all her dreams she had imagined this moment, when they were finally alone together, not in her office, or in the park, or in cafés, but alone face to face, able to do away with their defenses. His words came like an assault. The minute he broke from the embrace and stood at the kitchen counter she realized that for nearly a year, without being fully conscious of it, she had been waiting for this moment; everything that had transpired between them was leading to it.

She looked back at him in disbelief. She felt as if he had punched her in the stomach.

“You can’t do this,” she said. “You can’t extricate a woman from her life and then do this.”

“What are you talking about?”

“You know exactly what I’m talking about.”

“That ring on your finger. You come into my apartment looking that way. All dolled up. You can’t do that, Eleanor.”

“But you asked me to come.”

“I have to be focused on my work. Don’t you get it? If I blow this I go back to Colorado.”

She could not say a word.

“You see how I live and you know how others do.”

“Who cares the way other people live? And besides. Look what’s happening. Your work is getting noticed.”

“The good doctor. What kind of mattress does he sleep on?”

“This isn’t about Michael,” she said calmly. “It’s about us.” She spoke in the same comforting voice she used when she spoke to her boys, when one of them was upset or worried. But she didn’t know if she believed in what she was saying. “Let’s calm down. Let’s think it through.”

He looked at her strangely. “No, Eleanor. You have to leave. This isn’t going to work. You have to go back to your life.”

“My life? And what’s this? Intermission?”

“Yeah, that’s what it is. Don’t you get it? I can’t have you.”

She held on to the edge of the sofa to steady herself. He walked over to his laptop, sat down, and began to log in. “I can’t handle this right now, Eleanor.”

“What are you doing?”

“I’m expecting an e-mail from my publicist.”

“That’s it?” The room was spinning.

“I’m sorry,” he said. He turned off the computer. “I don’t know what I’m doing.”

Eleanor wanted everything to slow down so she could think. All she could picture was how lost she was going to feel the minute she left the apartment. She didn’t know what to say, but she had to find the words to turn it around. She couldn’t walk out of the apartment and be left like this. It was too late. Too much had happened. “What about what you said, about doing this for us? About you and me? What did you mean?”

“Eleanor, you act like I promised you something.”

Her hand reached out. She thought she would slap him.

He sat down next to her. “You’re married,” he said again softly. “Don’t you see? I could never give you what he can. What we have has to remain a memory. I can’t feel good about this. Not with you. It can’t be this way.”

“How will we know what’s possible if we don’t try?” The words came out of her mouth unexpectedly. Was it what she
really
wanted?

“Eleanor, have you known me to have a girlfriend in all these years? This is me we’re talking about.”

As he spoke his body seemed to say,
Please don’t walk away. Don’t abandon me. Walk me through this
. “You could try,” she said. He was making her say things she didn’t even know that she wanted. But the fact that he was saying no made her say yes. She didn’t know where this was leading but she couldn’t turn away. He had sprung out of nowhere and she had wandered away from her safe, secure life. They existed outside of ordinary time.

“You want to play house with me? Is that what you’re saying?” He paused. He smiled. What was he thinking? Dinners in her kitchen, nights underneath her covers? Mornings reading the
New York Times
on her couch? “Oh, Eleanor,” he said. “Why did you have to get married?”

“Why did you have to come here to my city? You have to leave. You can’t stay here.”

Still in a state of disbelief, she stood up to leave. He pulled her back and put his arms around her. “You know I care about you. You know what you mean. We can remember each other. It’s what I do at night. Maybe it’s more powerful that way.”

“Don’t say those things. I don’t want to hear them. I don’t understand. How did this happen? It wasn’t supposed to.”

“Your green eye looks so sad. Don’t do that to me, Eleanor. I can’t take it. I’ll call you. I promise. I have to do what’s in front of me right now. You have to understand that. Let’s let it breathe.”

She slapped him across the face and walked swiftly out the door.

She rushed quickly up Broadway, still feeling the sting in her palm. A million little birds were inside her, flapping their wings, wanting escape. Was it possible that she was supposed to go home in an hour and cook dinner for her family?