The Prettiest Feathers (4 page)

We are all voyeurs. Given the chance to look, we look—and, sometimes, the images we capture are held for a lifetime.

My mother stood with her back to the window and stepped out of the pale yellow dress she had worn to work that day. She turned her head from side to side, as if she were stretching the muscles in her neck. Then she moved her hands over the front of her body, caressing herself.

I was fascinated, mesmerized, and grabbed at the hardening between my legs. Even as she started to turn in my direction, I was unable to move.

Our eyes locked and her scream shattered the quiet of the late afternoon. I had to stop her.
He
would be home at any minute. I had to shut her up.

I ran into the house and down the hallway to her room. The door was locked. I pounded on it, but the door never opened.

My sister had come out into the hall and I pushed past her, rushing outdoors, into the deepening fog, and up the hill.

I was frenzied—kicking over buildings and smashing bridges with a length of limb wood. The only real sound was the apocalypse I brought down on my town, but still I could hear my mother’s screams echoing inside my head.

At supper that evening I sensed the change, the absence
of the empty chatter about the day. It was the game of Nobody Talks. Even my little sister played the game well, looking down at her plate as she pushed peas into her mashed potatoes. My mother served. My stepfather ate, shoved himself away from the table—and, on his way to the living room with his quart, he stopped, turned to look at me, then motioned for me to follow.

I stood, stuck my hand down into my pocket, and wrapped it around the knife. I didn’t know what would happen when I walked into the parlor behind him, but I wasn’t afraid. I left my body. Drifting. Watching from above. I saw myself looking down at the threadbare carpet, my hands behind my back, like someone who was waiting.

But I could also see that my hands were moving the blade of the knife—unfolding it and locking it open.

Mother grabbed me from behind, of course, before I could bring the blade down into the flesh of his neck. But I had drawn the blood that trickled down the wall, the blood that seeped into the fabric of his overstuffed chair, the blood that pooled on the pine floor. There was another beating. He called the police. And I had my first encounter with the mental health industry.

A large woman wearing thick glasses said, “Your parents told me what happened. I’d like to hear your side of things.”

I think the chair was made of real leather, and there was a hump in the middle of the seat. Each time I hoisted myself up, I slid forward again. I had to grip the arms to hold myself in place.

“This isn’t comfortable,” I said.

“Some things are hard to talk about,” she said, nodding.

“The chair,” I muttered.

“What were you going to do with that knife?” she asked.

“Kill him,” I said.

“But why?”

“I couldn’t very well kill
her
.”

They all agreed that I should be put away somewhere.

The state had places for people like me. I was no good. I would hurt somebody someday.

They were right.

I left the subway at Houston and walked to Emily and Others. I wanted to approach the place on foot, get a feel for the neighborhood, and to avoid the unofficial parking attendant I had encountered on my first visit.

Emily and Others is in a demilitarized zone that’s surrounded by Puerto Ricans, blacks, elderly Jews, and poor, white Irish. I walked the length of the street resisting the urge to cover my nose and mouth with a handkerchief against the stench of waste, and all the dust that hadn’t yet settled from last night’s wars.

I made the brass bell ring, then walked to the New Directions shelf and found a copy of Rimbaud’s
Drunken Boat
, the Varèse translation.

“Emily isn’t here,” Sarah said from behind me. “She’s at lunch with the others.”

Today she wore a navy skirt with a white blouse that was open at her throat. There was color in her face and definite humor in her voice.

“That brings us directly to why I’m here,” I said.

“Which? Emily, lunch, or the others?”

“You,” I said, and smiled my most engaging smile.

“I think we better start over.”

“Wouldn’t you rather have lunch? We could start over with a Caesar salad and some iced tea.”

“I can’t,” she said, looking genuinely disappointed. “There’s a girl who usually covers for me, but she isn’t here today. Harry, the owner, doesn’t like the place to be closed.”

“What about after work? We could go for coffee.”

She hesitated.

“My name may be Wolf,” I said, “but I’m not one.”

Sarah smiled. “There’s a little place down the block. I get off at five.”

“Five is fine,” I said. “But I’d like to choose the place, if you don’t mind. I’m very particular about my coffee.”

Again she hesitated, then finally shrugged. “I always thought coffee was coffee, but sure.”

I bought the Rimbaud and left.

Five hours later Sarah was waiting for me outside the bookstore when I pulled to the curb. The ebony guardian of the bricks was in place, hiding behind hooded eyes. I detest complications, and that particular piece of human debris had made himself one.

“Where are we going?” Sarah asked as she got into my car.

“Uptown,” I said. “There’s a place I like called Fast Eddie’s.”

“Never heard of it.”

Fast Eddie’s may not be well known, but Eddie takes pride in his coffee and dessert menu. The name is derived from Eddie’s having seen
The Hustler
too many times.

After settling down at the table Eddie had saved for us in a quiet corner, I recommended that Sarah try my favorite blend—half Colombian supreme, half French roast—with a piece of Eddie’s cheesecake.

“But I haven’t had dinner,” she said.

“Who ever said we have to eat our food in a certain order?” I asked. “Rules are made to be broken.”

She laughed. I looked at her hairline, forehead, eyebrows, the bridge of her nose, her eyes, her mouth—so that her face would become a picture in my mind, one I could conjure up at any time. And, of course, there was the uncorrupted scent of her soap. Finally, I had her to hold for as long as I wished.

“Who are you really?” she asked.

“I grew up on the coast of Maine, preacher’s kid. Went to college in the Boston area, made a few decent business deals in the seventies, a few better ones in the gluttonous eighties, and now I can afford to indulge my passion for literature, music, and excellent coffee. What about you?”

Sarah frowned. “I wouldn’t know where to start. I went to college for a while, but it was kind of a waste.”

She was struggling. I didn’t want that, but it did give me an opportunity to accomplish one of the purposes of the trip. I reached out and covered her hand with mine.

“We can share biographies another time,” I said. “Try the coffee.”

I didn’t let the moment drag on, become awkward. It’s always enough for me to touch a woman’s hand for just an instant. I learn what I need to know, and move on.

“This is good,” she said.

“Coffee isn’t just coffee.”

“No. I mean, I know.”

How pathetically pliant she was, instantly becoming whatever she thought I wished her to be.

We talked about the bookstore, the man named Harry who owned it, the types of customers it served, the fact that she loved to read but never did at work. It was enough for a beginning.

When I drove her home I accomplished the second goal of my mission: to find out where she lives. Sarah rents the upstairs apartment in a brick duplex opposite a small park on the west side of the city.

In
The Hustler
, Piper Laurie is the foil for all the male posturing. She lives in a walk-up flat, reads serious books, but can’t stay sober. She walks with a limp.

Sarah reminds me of Piper Laurie. She doesn’t walk with a limp, she thinks with one. When I dropped her off, I told her that I would see her again. She thanked me, nodded, and smiled—but looked preoccupied. I half expected her to limp up the front steps.

E
verything fell into place. My car was in the shop for an oil change. I’d taken the train to work, so when John Wolf said he’d pick me up, it was perfect. I ran upstairs to the massage parlor and borrowed a blazer from Sheila, the woman who worked up there. She was reluctant to part with it—she’d just gotten it back from the cleaners—but when I explained about my date, she understood right away.

I took John’s invitation as an omen. A sign. The notion of predestination appeals to me. But my feelings for him seemed to shift by the moment. I ricocheted from fear to fearsome attraction, and back again. That’s why, when we left Fast Eddie’s, I directed him away from the street where I lived, to one nearby. I pointed to a house that had been converted into a duplex, with a wooden stairway built onto its side—leading to an upstairs door that must have once opened onto a sun porch.

John’s good breeding was evident in his manners. He insisted on seeing me to my door, but I was just as determined to say our good-byes right there, in the car. When I
got out, he remained at the curb, watching me make my way up the steps. At the top, I turned and waved—and was relieved to see him pull away. If he had stayed, I would have had to invent some story about having lost my keys.

I paused before starting back down the steps. I wanted to make certain that he was truly gone. It was then that the apartment door behind me opened and an elderly woman asked what I wanted.

I turned and smiled. “Hello,” I said. “I’m a Jehovah’s Witness. You know—the
Watchtower
people?”

She slammed the door.

The house where I live is comfortable: a century old this year. My parents used to live here, and so did I, as a child. I left when I married Robert, and did not return until both Mother and Father were gone and the will had traveled through probate. By then my divorce was final, but incomplete. Robert kept inventing reasons to see me. One day after he had stopped by, I found his jacket on a chair. That was the beginning of his moving back in. His clothing accumulated over time, with the whole process taking less than a month. I didn’t even realize it was happening until it was complete.

I gave him a room that we considered “his.” It used to be the only bedroom on the first floor. By building shelves along three walls, we turned it into a place where he could keep all his guns and magazines. He had a telephone in there, too, because he never knew when he’d get a call and have to leave. Robert was (and is) a cop. Homicide.

He used to spend a lot of time in his room, reading or working on his reports. There were whole days when he wasn’t in the house at all. Cops don’t live like real people; sometimes they work around the clock and into the following day.

My reunion with Robert turned out to be as pointless as our marriage. Although there was nothing like love between
us, I did like having him in the house. I didn’t want to be in the same room with him, but a room away was fine. I felt safer with him there. He was the only continuing thread in my life, the only person who had ever seemed reluctant to be without me. But then one day I went out to run some errands. When I returned, I noticed that Robert’s house key was lying on the kitchen counter. That struck me as odd because I knew that he kept it on a chain with all his other keys.

Then I went into the bathroom—his toothbrush was missing from the holder on the wall. I knew then that he had returned to Lane. I pitied her; I hated him.

Robert’s parents are dead. His sister died in a car accident when they were children. Even his best friend took a bullet in the heart two days before his thirtieth birthday. I guess I shouldn’t have been surprised when, one drunken night, he turned to me and said, “I’m going to walk in here sometime and find you dead.”

Toward the end of our time together, I was afraid to be alone in the house with Robert. There seemed to be violence boiling beneath the carpet—bubbling from room to room, following us wherever we stepped. Sometimes when I walked toward him, to hand him his mail or a can of beer, I expected there to be an explosion, sudden and thorough. Armageddon. But there was nothing, not even shouting.

Now it is John Wolf that I fear, but in a different way.

That night, after our coffee date, I found it impossible to sleep. His face was right there in front of me, even when my eyes were closed. His hands and his lips were everywhere, reminding me of all those things about my body that I had worked so long and so hard to forget.

I hated him. I never wanted to see him again. Yet, the next day, I opened the phone book, looking for his number.

Luckily, I didn’t find it.

I was safe again.