Tiger, Tiger (37 page)
“It’s a rare opportunity. To go out and have some fun with people my own age. You want me to be with people my own age, right?”
“I knew this would happen. It was a matter of time. Why would you want to be stuck in here with an old man when you could be out dancing, having a good time?”
“It’s just that she’ll get mad, I know her; she’ll think it’s weird if I say no—”
“Go. Go have fun. Go get drunk. Go get high. I’m no good anymore. I wish I could take you out. I wish my back wasn’t so bad. If only I were a young man again, then I could make you happy . . . we could go to a disco . . . well, go, just go.”
I heard myself say, flatly, “I’d rather stay with you. Really. I just thought she’d be mad, that’s all. But I’m sure she’ll understand. It’s not like we planned it.”
Tania didn’t understand, though, and that was the end of the friendship.
Sitting by a mossy pond, watching tiny frogs leap, Peter said, “So what did you do yesterday with Rocco?”
I tossed a rock into the green pond, watched it ripple. “We went to Central Park again and got a rowboat. Then we had a shish kebab.”
“I took Inès there and we got one once. Imagine me doing that kind of intense physical labor now. So who rowed: you or him?”
“I tried to take an oar, but he wouldn’t let me.”
He exhaled a huge plume of smoke. I was tired of smelling it on my clothes, my hands. He never took into account that I had a sinus condition, which was worse than ever since he’d punched me in the nose. “So he’s got a macho streak, then. He’s passive, but they say it’s the quiet ones you’ve got to watch for.”
Rocco was the opposite of macho: he wrote children’s stories, sewed cloth African dolls, and was too much of a gentleman to do more than occasionally put his arm around my shoulder. Peter was like a hound following the wrong scent. I hadn’t told him about my friend George, who was helping me study for basic math tests. My math skills were only at a fourth-grade level when I took the entrance exam for HCCC; it was like everything I used to know had been erased. Somehow we’d gotten into a conversation about sex and he’d told me that he sensed I was a dominant woman posing as a girl-next-door type: my choice of footwear said it all. That and some low note of power he knew to listen for. Peter knew nothing of my knee-high lace-up boots; I’d bought them with Tania. George and I began an e-mail correspondence, unbeknownst to Peter, where we exchanged fantasy scenarios; his e-mail always began with “Dear Mistress Margaux.” In person, he continued to tutor me and that was all.
I thought Peter was done, but then he said, “Did he insist on paying again?”
“Yeah.”
“You know, if a guy pays, he’s going to want something in return.”
“We’re just friends. I always bring money. He’s just too polite to take it.”
He looked gloomy.
“What’s wrong?” I finally said.
“I don’t have any problem with you going out with guys your own age. That’s what you’re supposed to do. It’s just so hard to be on the sidelines. Even if he’s just a friend, it’s coming. I know it. And it’s all right, sweetheart. This is inevitable. I give you my blessing. I’m just, you know, a little jealous. But can you blame me? I was at the veterans’ hospital the other day; they want me to prick my finger every day now to test my insulin. I won’t do it; I’d rather die. Then I saw this old man in a wheelchair. Who would want to live like that? How can he stand it? I told Inès, and she said people get used to it. I could never get used to something like that.” He rested his head on my shoulder and said, “Please, please, think of me sometimes while you’re with them. No matter where you are or who you’re with, think of me.”
“Okay,” I said, but I recalled how my loyalty to him had already ruined my friendship with Tania. On the phone with her that night she’d wanted to go clubbing, she’d implied that I was a weirdo, and I never wanted to feel that way again.
That spring, I transferred to a four-year university where learning became my drug along with brief romantic entanglements with painters and musicians from turbulent backgrounds like mine. Like Eve, I was exploring a gated garden, playing and learning, falling in love, one day out of every seven, my spirit still bound to those old marriage vows even as my heart and body defied them. Though he was terribly jealous of my initial suitors, Peter wasn’t alarmed until at twenty I met twenty-six-year-old Anthony.
Shortly after we started dating, I told Peter I’d be seeing Anthony every Friday night in addition to the whole weekend. All those years he had tormented me with his Inès outings when I’d been too depressed to be by myself. A Byron line I’d written in my journal after it was read aloud by my professor in class kept coming back to me whenever I thought of Peter’s sadness:
Revenge is as the tiger’s spring,
Deadly, and quick, and crushing; yet, as real
Torture is theirs, what they inflict they feel.
Every Friday when he drove me back home, he did what he could to delay me from my date with Anthony when all I wanted to do was get inside my parents’ house so I could start preparing my hair and makeup. In the parked car, he unfolded his longest letter of the week and slowly read it aloud while he chain-smoked; these pages contained his memories of me at thirteen, at twelve, at eleven, at eight, at seven.
Peter often mentioned suicide in these letters. I wasn’t sure if he was doing that in order to try to win back his lost time; all I knew was that I wasn’t too worried. He hadn’t done it when his second wife divorced him, and I knew firsthand what it took to work up the nerve. Lately, he’d gotten very religious and was always asking if I thought hell was real. With Magic Markers he’d even made a drawing of a crown of thorns dripping with blood, interwoven with pink roses, and the words inscribed underneath: “He gave his blood to redeem our sins.” My mother was in a similar God phase so she taped it on the wall by her bed, along with magazine cutouts of animals and babies, pictures of me as a child, and scribbled self-help slogans.
He said all day Saturday he would watch his home movies of me and begged, “Think of me while you’re with him, every couple of hours at least, and I’ll think of you. Send me telepathic messages.” I recalled now that he’d wanted me to do that when I was a little girl, too. Sometimes he’d even whisper in my ear that he’d heard my thoughts. He kept nagging about wanting me to introduce him to Anthony, and when I tried to stall him, he asked if I was ashamed of the way he looked (he didn’t own a single piece of clothing that wasn’t stained, torn, or paint-stippled, and he’d lost his false teeth so he couldn’t wear them anymore for special occasions). I didn’t know why he was so desperate for this meeting, but I told myself he was just being fatherly.
“I used to hustle, but you’re not bad yourself,” Peter said, shaking Anthony’s hand after their game of pool. Anthony told me later that my half-uncle was sweet, but “a little out of his tree.” I asked what he meant and Anthony said, “Well, at one point he didn’t even notice he had two cigarettes going at once.”
On Monday, watching golfers whack ball after ball as we ate hamburgers from a small stand, Peter said, “So do you think Anthony suspects?”
“That we’re not blood-related?”
“Not just that,” Peter said. “I mean, about us.”
“What about us?” I said, shredding a napkin. There was nothing even going on between us now.
“Why do you do rip apart napkins? You’ve done that for the past eight years now,” he said, looking to the golfers.
“Of course he doesn’t know.”
“I think he suspects. I didn’t say he
knows
.”
“Why are you smiling like that?”
He stiffened. “What? I’m not allowed to smile? It’s a beautiful day.”
I had accounted for the time I spent with Peter by telling Anthony I babysat for a woman named Gretchen during the week. I took another napkin, started whittling it down.
“I noticed he had a hairbrush and hand lotion in the cup holder of his car; didn’t your father keep a comb in his glove compartment? That flashy sports car of his even looked like something Louie would drive.”
“My father had a gray Chevy, remember?”
“Yeah, but Louie was about what, forty-five when we met? I mean back when he was Anthony’s age . . .”
“I don’t think my father ever cared about cars. Anthony can identify an exact make and model in two seconds. He’s a car
nut
, especially hot rods. Do you know he started driving when he was only eight years old in an empty field with his dad? He took me to the exact same field and now he’s teaching me.”
“He also wore a lot of cologne. Not as much as your dad, but . . . oh . . . and his silver chain reminds me of your father’s cross.”
It was almost like he wanted to be back in time, meeting Poppa again at Benihana. Poppa had washed his hands of me after that. Did he want Anthony gone now, too? Like Tania? The question had begun to haunt me. Why, if he loved me, was he trying to keep me from moving forward? All he did now was obsess about was the past. “Well, they’re nothing alike. You saw how quiet Anthony is.”
“Maybe he just didn’t like me.”
“Well, why wouldn’t he?”
The smile came back as he stared at his intertwined fingers. “Because I’m his competition, that’s why. Even if he doesn’t know about us, people sense things.”
I started to worry then myself. I had gone to the bathroom while they were playing pool. Had Peter planted a clue? But there was no reason for Peter to do that, nor was there a chance Anthony could guess on his own, considering Peter’s appearance. His hair had gone completely white and instead of getting haircuts he’d drawn it into a ponytail, a look that wasn’t very flattering, for it further accentuated his deep wrinkles. He’d also decided to grow a mustache, not realizing it looked like a swathe of milk he’d forgotten to wipe off. When Anthony looked at Peter, he saw a sixty-four-year-old man who looked seventy-four. Peter thought he’d won that game of pool, but Anthony confided to me later that he’d thrown it on purpose.
T
hat winter, I got my driver’s license and my own car, a Toyota, which we started using for our rides just as often as Peter’s car. One day, I had to drive Peter to the veterans’ hospital when he unexpectedly ran out of Lorazepam. His addiction had gotten so bad he’d begun popping them at the slightest provocation. Shaking and sweating, he’d gripped my hand as we waited three hours in the emergency room for refills.
Driving him home that night, I turned the stereo off so I could better concentrate on the road but was then distracted by a hollow whistling sound like someone blowing air into a plastic cup with a hole cut in the bottom. After closing the windows so no wind slipped in, I realized that the spooky sound was just Peter’s emphysema.
One weeknight I was invited to Barnes & Noble by one of my creative writing professors to read my work. Peter decided to ride along with us in Anthony’s Firebird, saying that he didn’t want to miss my big moment. I didn’t really want Peter there, nor did I want to hurt his feelings by asking him to stay home. The reading was uneventful, except for the fact that a guy from my class kept flirting with me. On the ride home, Anthony kept thanking Peter for helping him keep his cool.
The next day, as I was pulling out onto Tonnele Avenue, Peter said with a weird smile, “He was sending me a message.”
“What? Who?”
“Your boyfriend. Anthony.” He stared out the window. “If it’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s you can’t predict people you don’t know. Be honest. Did you tell him something about me? I don’t want him banging on my door one night, scaring Inès—”
“For the millionth time: why would I tell him? So he’ll break up with me?”
“You should mention one time while you’re with him that I still know kung fu. Once you learn it, you never forget. Doesn’t matter how old you are.”
“Look, Anthony likes you so much he doesn’t want to see you destroy your car. I told him how you’ve been flooring it lately and he said that’s really bad for the transmission.”
Peter threw his cigarette out the window; the first time I’d ever seen him litter. “He doesn’t know what he’s talking about. It clears out the fuel lines.”
“Oh, come on, Peter. You don’t know cars.”
He was quiet for a minute, then said in a low voice, “Just because you’re sleeping with this guy means he knows everything, right?”
I wanted to punch him right in his gut, but I was afraid he’d really break my nose this time. For now, I told him, “Look, you don’t even know if we are, so why don’t you shut up and mind your own goddamn business.” Then I said, “He’s my
boyfriend
. What do you think?”
His smile cracked, warping his face so he almost didn’t look human. “So tell me, can he make you happy? The most impossible thing in the world!”
“Impossible when you’re selfish.”
“What do you mean?”
“Let’s just put it this way, he’s never in his life come across any
tap
dancers
, not a one, and believe me, he’s all the
better
for it.”
It took him a moment to realize what I was saying, but when he did, he demanded I pull over and then got out on Kennedy Boulevard with his mouth as tight as a wooden soldier boy’s. It would be many long blocks until home for him, and at the rate he was going it would probably take a good four hours. Head down, clutching his spine, he crossed the wide intersection. He was so slow the light changed and a souped-up Honda blasting salsa almost clipped him. I made a U-turn, double-parked, and called out, “Come on, just get back in the car. You can’t make this walk.”
“No. You go be with him. I’ve had it with your vindictiveness. All these years: what I’ve had to put up with, the cruel and callous words, the taunting, the way you’ve tried to control me, and for what? Fourteen years down the toilet, fourteen years, our love. I thought our bond could never break, but boy, I was wrong.”
I drove slowly back to my parents’ house, resisting the urge to call him when I got there. Perhaps it was time to end it. He had Inès. It was hard for me to sleep that night. I tossed and turned, thinking, “It feels bad now, but every day, it’ll be better. I’ll get used to it. He’ll get used to it, too.” The following day, I came home from class to discover he had brought my mother a white pillowcase containing all the notebooks of letters he’d written to me, some pictures, and some figurines. “I want Margaux to have these,” he had said. When I looked inside, I sank to the living room floor, drawing my knees to my chin, barely able to move. “Fourteen years,” was all I could think. “Fourteen years.” Almost my whole lifetime. My mother didn’t know what to do. Petting my face, she said, “You and Peter are always having little arguments. But you always make up again.”