Your Sad Eyes and Unforgettable Mouth (29 page)

“Modesty wouldn’t allow it.”

“Were the two of you friends growing up?” I asked. You and Patrick seemed very close suddenly.

But you gazed at me blankly, and so did he. Then you cupped my elbow with your hand and said, “You carry a blueprint for utopia in your breast pocket, don’t you, Joan? You do have breasts, I assume. If I’m out of line, just kick me.”

I leaned over so you could look down my shirt.

“Well, now. Not exactly hills like white elephants,” you said, peering in, “but perhaps dunes like white moths. Oh, glorious sight. Be still, my heart.”

“Time doesn’t exist,” Rosie said. “The future, in which we’ve all died, is already here, and the past, before we were born, is already here. Time drifts in and out the window.”

“Very good, Rosie,” you said gently.

“Whatever happened to all those people from Bakunin?” I asked. “Mimi, Sheldon, Bruno…”

“So touching, the faith we had in our capacity to change the world. I don’t know. I don’t know what happened to them, I haven’t kept in touch.”

“You had a crush on Olga, I think.”

“How adolescent those feelings seem now, in the light of my more immature feelings for Gloria.”

“I can’t believe I’m sitting here with you and Rosie and Patrick and we’re all friends,” I said. “I adore everyone!”

“Why?” Patrick asked.

“My brother is so cordial,” you said. “I think we should decide what we’re having before Joan here makes us all weep. Ever the vegetarian, Pat?”

But after the waiter had come and gone, you floundered, as if you’d lost your footing and were waiting for a chance wave to carry you back to shore. You slumped in your chair, looking despondent.

“Have a drink,” Patrick said, and at that moment the two of you could have been dual projections of a single person, each half revealing the unseen side of the other. Patrick’s agitated dispassion was a mirror reflection of excitability; your iconoclastic monologues were mirror reflections of harried ideology. You loved each other in spite of everything; I wondered whether your mother knew.

The inn was air-conditioned, and when we came out of the château, the heat seemed artificial for a few seconds, as if we’d stepped onto a movie set.

You said, “Shall we go dancing? Of course, nightlife in these parts is somewhat limited, but the desk clerk suggested an establishment known as Cheri.”

“Yes, let’s dance!” Rosie clapped her hands. “Like in that song,
The Crucifixion
. “Do you like Phil Ochs, Tony?”

“Can one possibly not like Phil Ochs? After you.”

I don’t remember the drive to Cheri. We were nearing the longest day of the year and it was still light out, but the club was dark and smoky. Other than that, Cheri didn’t look much like a bar or dance club; the room was too large, the tables too spread out, the curtained windows too respectable. There was a live band, however, and their electronic equipment was on full blast.

“Look! It’s Jean-Pierre!” I yelled into Rosie’s ear. The lead singer of the band was the boy with the tanned midriff who’d driven Patrick’s Mercedes.

We sat down at a table and shouted our orders—beer for you and Patrick, a double vodka and orange juice for me. I wasn’t afraid of alcohol, only of drugs. The effects of alcohol were predictable, and they wore off after a few hours, leaving you exactly as you were
before. Rosie asked for water, and you nodded your approval. “Never mix eye of newt with toe of frog,” you said. “Maya, may I have this dance?”

“Oh, Anthony! I can’t,” I moaned. “I have seven left feet.”

“I’ll dance with you,” Rosie said, and the two of you walked hand in hand to the dance floor. You didn’t jiggle ecstatically like the others; you held Rosie close, prom-style, as if hearing a ballad. It didn’t matter. It was cool to do your own thing, if you knew how to do it. You looked lovely and happy, you and Rosie, and I wanted that moment to be the way things were, always, rather than a brief digression.

Jean-Pierre spoke between numbers, but his French was too slangy or the volume was too high for me to make out what he was saying. Time drifted in and out the windows, as Rosie had said. Suddenly there was a commotion at one of the tables and we all turned to look. A scruffy-looking guy with shoulder-length hair was writhing on the floor, calling for help. He swung his head from side to side and shouted, “Mon Dieu, aide-moi!”

“‘Piper, pipe that song again,’” you said. “Now
there’s
a junkie. Time to go, children.”

But Rosie didn’t want to desert the junkie. “Can’t someone help him?” she pleaded.

“There’s nothing we can do,” you said. Patrick paid for the drinks and we left Cheri.

“Poor thing,” said Rosie, as we walked to the car.

“Yeah, poor thing,” Patrick echoed, but the parody was absurdly out of place in the circumstances, and because I was slightly drunk, it frightened me.

We drove back to the cottage in silence; I think we all felt that our outing had started to come apart at the seams. Though it had grown cooler, when we disembarked you decided to go for a swim, so we all stumbled down to the lake. The moon looked dusty under shredded grey clouds, and in the faint light that reached us from the house we were shadowy figures who could have been anybody.

You stripped and ran into the water with a strange roar. Rosie, still in her white dress, followed you in.

I sat on a blanket and watched the two of you splashing under the unfathomable night sky, with its lonely yellow-grey moon and stars that had burnt out four million years ago.

Rosie waved at me from the lake. “I’m coming out now!” She dragged herself towards the blanket, snuggled up next to me, and fell asleep.

“We have to take her inside,” I said. “She’s all wet.”

“I’ll do it,” Patrick said resentfully. With surprising strength he lifted Rosie and slung her over his shoulder, as if she were a wounded soldier. I was sure she’d wake up, and maybe that was the intention, but she didn’t stir.

You’d found in one of the linen chests a large bath towel decorated with Halloween skeletons, witches on broomsticks, leering pumpkin faces. You draped the towel around your waist and said, “This wayfarin’ stranger wouldn’t mind a bed either. May I join you, Maya? I don’t think I can make it through the night on my own.”

I said, “Sure,” and we went inside. You lay down on your back on the brass bed. I sat beside you, wide awake.

“What happened with your wife?” I asked.

“Oh, it’s a short story. I can’t go into it.” Your voice was slow and easy; it was the unguarded voice you’d revealed to me when you braided my hair that morning on the beach, when I was twelve.

“How did you meet?”

“At a party.”

“Where?”

“New York. I can’t really get into it.”

“What’s she like?”

“Gloria? She’s been through a lot.”

“What happened?”

You turned over on your side to face me. “No father, mother died when she was two. She was taken in by an aunt who also died,
then there was a series of foster homes, if you can call them that—until she found this boyfriend. I couldn’t possibly describe him to you. He got her into soft-porn modelling and took her to clubs and that’s where we met, at a club. He got all heavy, and I rescued the damsel in distress.”

“When did you get married?”

“A month after we met.”

“Did she really join the Black Panthers?”

“Someone invited these revolutionaries to a Hollywood party as a showpiece, some Black Panther ripoff group, and they initiated Gloria into the great black cause.”

“She’s black?”

“Half, I think. She thinks.”

“If it’s just the group … she’ll get bored with them. Or they’ll have a fight. She’ll start missing you and she’ll come back.”

He didn’t answer for a few minutes. Then he said, “It wasn’t working out anyhow.”

“How come? In what way?”

“I don’t know, Maya. It was doomed, probably, from the start. Not that I didn’t try. We did the whole scene, shuttling back and forth between 54 in New York and pool parties in L.A. It’s hard to explain what those things are like. It’s not just that it’s meaningless, that would be okay, most of life is meaningless. It’s that it’s so unbelievably malicious. You really get to understand, when you watch status-hungry people, how fascism works—how easily people are drawn into fantasies of power and control, what a thin veneer it all is. Everyone so terrified of not fitting in—fitting in to what? And they’ll do anything, and I mean anything, to prevent that from happening. It would be pathetic if it didn’t make them so nasty and stupid … But I went along with all of it for Gloria’s sake. It seemed to be what she wanted, even though I didn’t think it was good for her. She wasn’t like the others, but she wanted something, and she thought that’s where she’d find it. I’m not saying we could have made it if we’d been somewhere else. It
probably would have ended no matter what. I just couldn’t give her what she wanted, whatever that was or is.”

“You have integrity.”

“You must be joking. You must be joking. You’re not idealizing me, are you? Because I was your counsellor at camp or some shit like that?”

“No, you do.”

You sat up and said, “You of all people, not to see through that…” You looked around as if searching for something.

“What is it?” I asked.

“I need a smoke.” You darted out of the room and returned with a nearly empty pack of cigarettes.

“Did you really burn your novel?” I asked.

You lit a cigarette and inhaled deeply. You said, “I disposed of it in a less dramatic way.”

Your towel was slipping, and without thinking I drew the bedspread around my shoulders. “I’m sure it was better than you thought.”

“I’m sure it was worse.”

You laughed your spooky, hollow laugh, and I said, “Your laugh scares me.”

“Everyone says that. I won’t laugh.”

“No, it’s good, it matches that snazzy Halloween towel. What was your novel about?”

“The struggle of the proletariat.”

“Really?”

“No. It was about a guy who bore an uncanny resemblance to myself, living a life uncannily similar to mine. It was stunningly bad, believe me.”

“I’m sure it wasn’t. I wish you hadn’t thrown it out … Why does Patrick hate your mother so much?”

“Does he? Does he hate her? I think it’s just a game they both enjoy playing.”

“I don’t think she enjoys it.”

“No, no—you’re right. Enjoyment doesn’t really apply in Vera’s case. You know, your mother used to call every day at Bakunin.”

“Really? No one told me!”

“Mimi took the calls. She’d reassure your mother that you were okay, then after about three minutes she’d start clicking the button and moving the receiver away, pretending they were losing the connection. Your poor mother never caught on. I don’t know how you came out so together, living with her.”

“My grandmother lives with us too. And I’m not together. You saw how not together I am, when you left me that letter.”

“Yes, the story of my miraculous conception. Dad always communicated that way, through letters and notes—even when he was living with us. He’d hide them in books he thought Vera would read, or under her dinner plate … I guess they couldn’t communicate directly—Vera was like on Morse code or something. Dad got really drunk once, when we were up here, and he went out naked in the canoe … but that’s another story.”

“Did you ever … you know, look for the notebook?”

“What do you think?”

“I wouldn’t…”

“You would, if Vera was your mother.”

“But Patrick never did,” I said. “I hope you don’t mind that I asked him.”

“Did he know about it?”

“Yes, he knew, but he has no interest in reading it. He says he never will … Why is Patrick so untouchable?”

You stared into space and ashes from your cigarette fell on the bedspread. “I don’t know. He was like that even when he was really young. Once, we were all sitting around the Christmas tree, our grandparents were there too—they flew in from London. Dad was being friendly, and he put his hand on Pat’s thigh. Pat jumped as though he’d been electrocuted. He went all white and I thought he was going to strangle poor Dad. Instead he left the house, took a taxi to the SPCA, and came home with Woofie.”

“That’s strange.”

“Yes. He was always easily embarrassed, though. Always shy. Maybe he got it from Vera. I can’t remember her ever kissing or hugging us. She probably did when we were little, but I can’t remember it. She was nice to us, but it was Dad we went to for affection. We climbed on his lap. At least I did. I remember that, climbing on his lap, inspecting his ears and his beard.”

“You know, Patrick pretends the two of you aren’t close. But when I see you together … you act like brothers.”

“I never know what he’s thinking. No one does, he doesn’t open up.”

You stubbed out your cigarette on one of the rails of the bedstead. Then you removed the damp towel, which in any case had come loose, and slid under the sheet, lay flat on your back again. Something dark and foreign had flapped around between your legs for a second, before I averted my eyes.

“You read plays together?”

“Yeah, he was a smart kid. I took him to movies, taught him pool … we did things together. Then Dad left, and I left right after. That was probably hard on him, both of us leaving around the same time. Just him and Vera and that creepy Davies in the huge house.”

“Your mother once interpreted a dream for me.”

“Really? What did you dream?”

I described the fox dream—the creatures gutted out in the opening shots of a movie, the instruments on the table, the evolutionary progression from creature to creature until at last I was the one on the table, blonde and unfreckled, and then the title of the movie coming on the screen:
The Fox
. I added a part I’d neglected to tell Dr. Moore—the cinema I was sitting in: I was the only one there, and the seats alternated between sickly light blue and primary red, and they were made of a revolting, absolutely revolting, kind of plastic.

“You mother said I wanted to have guts, and fun, and to be foxy.”

You shook your head and said, “Poor Vera, she tries so hard, but she always gets it wrong. That dream is about your future, Joan. You’re going to be looking inside people, inside yourself. You already do that. You don’t realize how different you are—everything with you is on a level most people don’t even know exists.”