The Saving Graces (7 page)

Emma kept blinking, jerking her head toward me in small spasms. "What?" "Shh. I'll call you, we'll talk." "Okay." And then she laughed. She threw her head back and crowed. Everybody stopped talking and looked at her.
"What's funny?" Henry wanted to know.
I said, "Nothing," and turned away to open the door. I thought, Well, maybe I was mistaken. But then Sally hugged me and everybody else, Brad shook hands with Henry and Mick, Henry hugged Emma, Mick hugged me-and Mick and Emma didn't even look at each other. I think they might've mumbled, "G'night," but that was it. So I knew. I rarely err when it comes to this sort of thing.

   "Good dinner," Henry said later that night, peering at his teeth in the bathroom mirror.

   "It was." I'd made thaazi sacig aur narial (beef with curried spinach and coconut); the recipe said "serves ten," but six of us ate it all. That's my definition of a successful dinner. I said, "Sally's awfully nice, isn't she?" Henry grunted. "And you and Mick really hit it off." But that didn't surprise me; I've yet to meet anyone who doesn't like Henry.
"Yeah, I liked him. Interesting guy. Know what he said? Prob'ly won't come to anything, but he's gonna recommend me and Jenny to his studio landlord for plumbing work. And guess who his landlord is." "Who?" "Carney Brothers. If we could get any kind of a foothold downtown in one o' those big ol' buildings- something's always going wrong, they're a gold mine for repairs. Just a couple o' maintenance contracts, and we'd be set. Wouldn't that be something?" "It would be." - "I'll call Jenny tomorrow-guess it's too late tonight. Prob'ly won't come to anything," he said again, "but it was nice of Mick to offer. Most people wouldn't think of it." -Henry calls his mother Jenny. I used to think it was strange - I can't imagine calling my mother "Irene." But he grew up in a women's commune in North Carolina back in the 1960s, so he had a lot of mothers. No fathers, but a lot of mothers. Rather than call them all "Mom," he called them by their names, including his own mother. I guess it makes sense.
"Yeah, it was a nice party, but something was in the air, I thought," Henry said, moving aside so I could take off my makeup in front of the sink. "I thought maybe Emma didn't like Sally, or maybe she and Brad were fighting. Can't figure out what she sees in that guy anyway." "Brad? Oh, I think he's nice. No, Emma likes smart people, and Sally's so clever, that's not it. It's Mick she doesn't like." - - "Mick! You think?" "Well, did you ever hear them say two words to each other?" Henry said, "Huh," thoughtfully.
"They looked at each other, but they never talked. That interview they did together for the paper didn't go well, obviously." "Huh." I finished brushing my teeth and yawned. "Tired?" Henry was watching me in the mirror. I was tired, but I shrugged and said, "Oh," in a noncommittal voice. In case he had anything in mind.
But then I spoiled the mood by saying, "You know those fruit-stuffed game hens I make? Do you think they'd be good enough to serve to my parents when they come in December?" He'd been giving me a little back rub. He took his hands away and said, "Prob'ly not," and walked out. Throwing over his shoulder, "But then, what could be?" I finished what I had to do and followed him, with Lettice shuffling down the hail in front of me. Henry was already in bed with his reading light out, eyes closed, hands folded over his stomach. Oh, no, you don't, I thought. I settled Lettice in her dog bed, then sat down on Henry's side of the mattress so he had to look at me. "Don't you want them to come? It's only for two nights." "Sure I want 'em to come. They're your parents." "Really?" "Sure. But it's not two nights, honey, it's four." "No, two." - - "Two on the way down, two on the way back. Four." "No, one on the way down, one back." My parents were planning to stay at our house on either side of their annual trip to Florida.
"Oh." - - - He looked so relieved, I laughed. I twisted the ends of his mustache between my fingers, trying to make them curl up. He smiled and closed his eyes again. My husband looks like an aging hippie. You might not think I'd like that look, but on him I do. He wears his hair in a neat, tidy ponytail during the day, but at night he lets it down and it falls across the pillow like a shiny, dark red flag, thick and gorgeous. I can't keep my hands out of it.
"Anyway, it won't be so bad," I told him. "They like you, they really do." "Sure they do." "They do." "Lee, give up. You married a blue-collar gentile. A redneck blue-collar gentile. As far as your parents are concerned, you couldn't have done worse if you'd married an Arab." "Oh, boy, that really shows what you know." I got up and went over to my own side, flouncing down in bed, yanking the sheet out from under his hip to cover myself. "You married a heterosexual, but your mother doesn't hate me." Good one. Score a point for Lee.
Henry started laughing. I didn't see anything funny, so I just lay there. When he saw I wasn't amused, he turned away, clasping his hands across his forehead and staring up at the ceiling. Brooding. - I hate to say it, but my family intimidates Henry. They honestly like him, but he can't see it. He can't get over it that my father is a physicist, my mother's an economist, one brother is a psychologist, and the other is a cardiologist. And he's a fatherless plumber from the South, in business with his mother. It's true I have more money than Henry has, but it's not because I earned it. My field is early childhood development, a woman's profession, which means no status and no money. I happen to be well off because my mother tells me what stocks to buy, and she's rarely wrong. I'm sorry to- say that this is another sore point with Henry. He doesn't blame me, he blames himself, and then he gets quiet and moody. Our troubles conceiving a child aren't helping anything either, believe me.
I touched his ankle with the side of my foot, then held still, pretending it was an accident. Every night he puts on clean shorts and a fresh T-shirt before bed. I love the fragrance of the fabric softener and that fresh, linty, dryer smell. It always puts me in the mood.
But sex between us has gotten so complicated. It's almost not even connected to love anymore, it's all about temperature charts and fertility windows. Getting up early to pee in a cup, and botching a test that only has three steps. Ask me anything about urinary LH- luteinizing hormone. I have three ovulation prediction kits in the bathroom. We thanked God when we found out Henry had a varicocele - a varicose vein in his scrotum; it raises testicular temperature, and it's the most common cause of male infertility. So he had microsurgery to repair it and we started over. Nothing. Now we're back to basal thermometers and fertility periods and little pink sticks that turn blue. You have to make love when they turn blue whether you want to or not.
I moved my foot a little, stroking, fluffing the hair on his calf. This was a good time for me, hormonally speaking. But he knew that-I'd told him so this morning. If I made a suggestion now, he'd think it was because of the timing. And the truth is, it would be. Partly.
Oh, God, what's going to happen? Sometimes Henry can't perform. Not often-only twice. It's because of the stress, obviously, we both know that. The second time, he said, "I've never been impotent in my life!" and I said, "Well, I'm impotent, too, it just doesn't show!" That helped us a little. It hasn't happened since then.
Oh, I want a child so badly. I'm stuck, my life is stalled, I can't get on with it until I solve this problem. I know it's not fair to anybody, especially Henry, but I don't know what to do. I don't know how to get out of this cycle of trying and failing, hying and failing.
I sighed and turned out the light. We always kiss, the last thing before going to sleep. Once in a while it leads to something, but usually it's just a sweet, good-night peck. We groped for each other in the dark, finally found each other's lips.
"Night." "Night." I started to roll back to my side, but Henry kept my hand and pulled me over, halfway onto his chest. He has a very deep chest. It's not comfortable to sleep on - I've tried, it's like a too-high pillow. I said, "Honey-" But he reached dOwn and grabbed me around the hips, hauling the rest of me on top of him~ "Hey, I was thinking." Well, this was better. I stretched out, getting comfortable. "Thinking what?" - He slipped his big hands inside my pajama bottoms. "Thinking you might like to ravish me." I yawned. "I might, but I'm pretty tired." He tried to see my face in the dark. I'm not what you would call a big kidder-he didn't know if I was teasing or not. "Really?" "No, not really." I put my arms around his neck. So we made love. And it was good, it's always good, but at the critical moment I didn't climax. I don't think Henry knew. I wanted to, but my mind was distracted. All I could think of was, This time it's going to work. This time. This time for sure.
Kirby kissed me last night. I couldn't have been more surprised if he'd drawn a gun and shot me. I thought he was gay.
I've assumed it for months, and now I see the assumption was based on very little, hardly anything at all. I'd never known him to have a date, and he didn't talk about women he used to date-that was one thing. He's a part-time actor-that was another. (I'm deeply embarrassed. Honestly, I deplore stereotypes.) There's something rather monklike about him, a certain contemplative quality. He's a quiet, very kind, extraordinarily gentle man, who would rather listen to me than talk about himself.
On second thought, what else could I think?
We were walking home from a play at the Church Basement Theater on Seventeenth Street, an experimental production by a local playwright in which Kirby had played a mute turnpike tollbooth operator. I hadn't understood a word of it, and he was trying, with much diffidence and tact, to explain it to me. It had just begun to snow, the first fall of the season, and we'd stopped to watch the thick, wet flakes swirl in the halo of a streetlamp. We had never touched before, never so much as held hands. Still, it felt quite natural to turn my head and rest it, just lightly, on his shoulder and say, "Isn't it lovely?" We might have been actors in a movie- because he looked into my eyes and echoed, "Lovely." And he- touched my face with his gloved fingertips. - He kissed my cheek. All I could do was stare at him, nonpiussed and suddenly shy, fumbling in my mind for an explanation for this confusing turn of events. I thought, -But you're gay! And then he kissed my mouth, and I knew he wasn't. It was like discovering that someone you thought you knew has been in drag all along. Exactly like that-like finding out your woman friend is really a man.
He drew back to smile at me, but I couldn't smile back, couldn't even speak. I was utterly dumbfounded. Gradually my silence began to embarrass him. "I'm sorry," he said. "Isabel, I'm very sorry:' "It's all right," I said automatically. Meaninglessly. We- started to walk again. He went back to explaining the play, but of course now it was terribly awkward. And I couldn't do anything to smooth the situation over-I was too busy trying to rearrange everything I had ever thought about him. - We live in the same building, in the noisy heart of Adams-Morgan. His third-floor apartment is directly over mine. He's a quiet neighbor, and yet the walls and floors are so thin, I can still hear him with rather unsettling clarity; I can tell what room he's in, for example, and more often than not, what he's doing. I daresay he can hear me almost as well-the first time we spoke, he called on the telephone to ask if I would please turn my stereo up so that he could hear the "Appassionata" without straining. His deep, cultured voice intrigued me, even though I thought at first he was being sarcastic. Another false assumption.
When we met in person, his looks neither confirmed nor contradicted the mistaken impression which was to grow, slowly but surely, the longer I knew him, that he was a homosexual. He's tall, thin as a stalk, almost completely bald. His eyes would be piercing, because of the intense way he has of staring at people, if they weren't such a benign shade of soft brown. His nose is like a blade, sharp and pointed on the end, but his lips are soft. Surprisingly soft. As I have discovered. He looks malnourished, but he's really quite strong-I know this from all the furniture-moving and household repairs he's done for me over the course of our friendship. What drew us together, a passion for music, is still our strongest bond. We love to go to concerts together, and now we marvel that we never met before or at least noticed each other, for we invariably occupy the cheapest seats at the Kennedy Center, the DAR, the Lisner, the Baird Auditorium.
Last night, after our awkward walk home in the snow, Kirby came to my door, as he always does, to see me in and say good night. But of course it was different this time. - "Would you like to come in?" I asked.
"No, I'll go up. Thanks. It's late." I almost let him go, but then I couldn't. Something needed to be said. To pretend nothing had happened would be insulting to him, cowardly of me. On the other hand, what ill were making too much of it? What if his kiss had been an impulse, a gesture of friendship, no more? No, it was more than that for him, I was sure of it.
"My life - is changing, Kirby, I'm changing, so quickly these days, I can hardly keep up with myself. I'm completely self-absorbed just now. It's simply the wrong time for me to form a-a romantic attachment. I'm too selfish, too caught up in myself to do justice to anyone else. I love our friendship, I don't want it to change. I'm so fond of you. Please understand." I said more, I can't remember what, and through it all he listened intently, his body inclined toward me, his head cocked in polite attention. He really is the most wonderful listener.
Finally I stopped. I felt sheepish and dissatisfied, and very much as if I were missing something.
He said in a low, controlled voice, "Isabel, the last thing I wanted to do was upset you. I didn't know it would take you so much by surprise. The truth is, I've wanted to kiss you for a long time." I may have blushed. I said, "I had no idea." He frowned, as if that amazed him. Whatever may happen between us, I can never, ever tell him what I thought. Already it's almost inconceivable to me that I believed, as recently as yesterday, that this man was gay.
He put one hand in his coat pocket and looked down at his feet. "You could think about it some more. Let the shock wear off. Then. . ."He made a casual, hopeful gesture, stealing a glance at me through his eyelashes.
"I can truthfully say that tonight I'll think of little else." "Well, that'll make two of us." A good exit line. He made a little bow, murmured good night, and walked away. Nice timing, too. Must be the theatrical background. He's the reverse of Gary in that way-Gary had awful timing. But then, he's the reverse of Gary in almost every way.
I kept my word and thought about him at length. It's possible the time has come for me to find someone. I divorced Gary four years ago, and there's been no one at all since Richard Smith. "The aptly named Dick," as Em-ma always calls him. I try never to think of him; he comes with too many bad memories. A year and a half after the divorce, three months after Richard and I began a relationship- he was an instructor in my graduate school program - I found the lump in my breast. Or rather, Richard found it, fooling around at the movies. 'What's this?" he whispered, breaking in on a touching scene in Sense and Sensibility.