Anagrams (22 page)

George pulls her wrist and shouts, “Ow,” howls as if she’s been mortally wounded, something she’s staged for Eleanor’s benefit. Then she runs to Eleanor’s chair, stands next to it, and both of them are just there, staring at me from across the table, their eyes swirling far away like the surfaces of four complicit moons, four sour apples, four angry gods, four angry oh-my-gods, with their arms hugging, their mouths hung open, rubbery with flabbergast.

“Are you all right?” Eleanor asks later.

“I’m fine,” I snap, lift plum pudding out of the oven, mix hard sauce with difficulty, drinking most of the brandy myself.

We eat dinner uncomfortably, a ritual we are bad at; all dissembling and irony, we are doing imitations of other people at Thanksgiving and we do them feebly, looking around, like kids from Tomaston not knowing what fork to use.

After dinner George and Eleanor play cards in the living room. They talk in low tones. I’m in the kitchen and can’t hear what they’re saying.

When it starts to get dark outside, Eleanor has to go. She
comes into the kitchen and puts her arm around my waist. “Do you need any help?” and I say no. We hug and she says she has to get going, George has destroyed her in twelve straight rummy games, the girl’s a killer.

“I know,” I say.

George and Eleanor say good-bye by laughing and pretending to sock one another in the stomach.

By nightfall George is still not speaking to me. She has gone outside, gotten on her bike, driven to the edge of our property and the Shubbys’ and remained there, arms folded.

“George, get in here,” I call from the front door. I have on only a light sweater. George has crookedly donned earmuffs and an unzipped jacket, no mittens.

She refuses. She re-folds her arms and tells me she’s running away. She’s straddled the bar of the bike; it’s too big for her.

“On your bike?” I shout.

“Yup, and I want my bank book this instant,” she shouts. “I’m not on your property, so don’t worry.”

“George, please.” My knees are rags, my head mush, my life chestnut dressing chopped for hours and hours. Is this my daughter? I don’t recognize her. I close the door, but don’t lock it. I leave her, go upstairs, and climb into bed with my clothes on and my shoes.

At five-thirty in the morning I’m up, downstairs, boiling water and pouring it over oatmeal. Though rumpled I am already dressed, this is easy, this amuses me. In the living room Georgianne is on the sofa, asleep with her earmuffs still on.

I look out the window. She has left her bike fallen on the Shubbys’ property. The streetlight is still on. I start to turn away, back to my oatmeal, when I see her, the woman with the bathrobe out in the middle of the street again, with two children and a dog, and they are waving, though the dog sees something and runs after it and the children say something to each other, take each
other’s hands and walk off in another direction, and the woman is left standing alone, still waving, dauntless, happy to see me.

November twenty-ninth is my birthday. I have an ache in my wisdom tooth. Darrel is supposed to be back from his parents’ house in New Jersey and is supposed to take me out to dinner.

I count too heavily on birthdays, though I know I shouldn’t. Inevitably I begin to assess my life by them, figure out how I’m doing by how many people remember; it’s like the old fantasy of attending your own funeral: You get to see who your friends are, get to see who shows up.

Eleanor has to be away for the day but she drops by early in the morning to give me a beautiful piece of pottery with zigzags. It seems expensive, as solid solitary objects often do, though I know nothing about pottery. Georgianne has smiled at me, kissed me, made me a card. It has three construction paper panels: The first has a flower in a flower pot; the second has the same flower in a flower pot, only this time the flower has grown; in the final panel the flower has grown so much you can’t even see it—only the stem and the pot. At the bottom she has scrawled in crayon: “My love just grows and grows and grows for you. Happy Birthday. Your Daughter, Georgianne Michelle Carpenter.” It’s the exact same card design she used last year—an idea filched from a children’s magazine. Apparently she thinks I would have forgotten that she gave it to me, assumes adults don’t really take that much notice of children and that therefore she can get away with this theft and redundancy. I kiss her. I thank her. We are friends again, funny friends. I nibble on her head and say, “I chews you.” She giggles, brings her shoulders up to her ears in a lovely shrug-hunch.

In the kitchen we eat ice cream. I can’t get it together to make a cake.

·  ·  ·

Darrel gives me a kiss with much rump-rubbing and torso-pressing. I haven’t seen him since before Thanksgiving; this feels nice; and though he could have phoned at least once this feels like love what do I know.

“I missed you,” he says in what I deem a heartfelt way.

We are in the car, driving. Darrel’s driving.

“Where are we going for dinner?” I ask. It’s getting darker earlier these days. “You’re not losing an hour, you’re gaining a sun,” I always tell my classes in the spring when the clocks get set ahead again.

“A little place out past the mall. We just keep going straight.”

“I hope it’s not that cynical Chinese place.”

“What cynical Chinese place?”

“That place with the ferns and all that cheap French wine.”

“No, this is a new place. I’ll tell you: It’s called Fig’s.”

“Oh, Gerard’s been there,” I say. “He says it’s nice,” and then suddenly I know what this is: a surprise party. I know it. I’m sure of it.

“Is this a surprise party?” Now I will watch Darrel lie. When he says no, I will study him, watch how he does it; from here on in I will know what he does when he lies, how he sets his face, how he moves his mouth, I will know his lie look, his lie voice, his lie words, though he won’t know I’m gathering this intelligence; nonetheless, I must gather.

“No,” says Darrel, and because we’re stopped for a light I can turn and see his face fall into a configuration of mature concern, of heartfeltedness. He reaches over and attempts to squeeze my left buttock, though mostly the car seat’s in the way.

“I just want to take you to a place you’ve never been to before.”

“Did you sleep with someone over Thanksgiving?” It’s a long light, and I watch his face.

“Benna,” he scolds. And then smiles, slightly self-conscious, shakes his mature, concerned, heartfelt head, and pinches me gently in the hip.

“Surprise!” shouts everyone. There is Gerard and Maple and some people I don’t know, some friends of Gerard, why does Gerard always have friends I don’t know. They wanted to go to a party; I’m only the excuse; I feel bashful and hide my face in Darrel’s sleeve as if I were Georgianne, then lift it out again. There are a few affectionate laughs and “Aw’s.” I look along their faces, and suddenly I see Verrie. She looks beautiful and stands and we hug tight.

“God, you look great,” I gasp.

“It’s California,” she says. “I hate it. Hate brings out my youthful glow.”

“Not me,” I say. “Hate makes weight,” and I puff out my cheeks and laugh but I have indeed gained weight should I care.

Fig’s is orange and square with several cigarette machines. It looks like the FVCC faculty lounge. My eyes feel scrappy and splotched. Verrie’s in town for a day, she says.

Gerard kisses me, brings me a chair. “Happy Birthday, Benna. Were you surprised?”

“Oh, yeah,” I say.

Gerard gives Darrel a friendly tap. “Good work,” he says.

“It was nothing,” says Darrel, all male conspiracy. I feel manipulated, described in the third person. Regardless of how you try to love them, men always return to one another in the end.

Eight people around a table. Introductions. Names like Pooky and Cappy. (No Merrilee.) Drinks like scotch. Presents
like books. Food like steaks and chops. Why was Joan of Arc luckier than Mary Queen of Scots? Because Joan got a hot stake and Mary only got a cold chop. Cappy howls, spills a drink. Jokes like that.

There is a birthday cake. Candles like spikes in a large 34. Now being in my thirties is getting serious. Now the second number is larger than the first. Someone gives me a card that says, “You’re not getting older, you’re getting bitter.” Darrel leans over and kisses me.

Gerard also leans over and kisses me, apologizes for the birthday card, reminds me not to drink too much I have to teach tomorrow, says, jokingly, “You’re almost as drunk as I am,” and soon Gerard and I are up and doing Motown Shakespeare. Verrie has requested it. “As you from crimes would pardoned be / Let your indulgence set me free why don’t you babe.” We do footwork and spins like the Temptations.

All the world’s a stage we’re going through.

The ants are fewer, sluggish and wintry, perhaps swacked with schnapps. Some of their bodies are tinged with gray. They stumble under worm husks, still scale the stucco. The crack has reached the rear kitchen window, and the sky spits snow. Madame Charpentier has a new black tangle at her throat. Her children have mustaches.

Eleanor is back with Newton and has changed her mind about Italy. I tell her again about going to the Caribbean with George. “Wanna come?” I ask. “It might be fun.”

“Not me,” she says. “I’ll throw the going-away party.” She toasts me with her coffee cup. “Happy going away.”

“Please, I’m not going away
yet
.” I nibble at my cuticle.

“Sorry,” says Eleanor, proposing a new toast. “Happy will be going away.”

We sip our coffee. We smack our lips. “Yes,” I say. “That is probably true.”

Gerard says he bombed out at the Met auditions. He says he doesn’t want to talk about it. I oblige him but then wonder what sort of complicity with his demons and my own weak, ignoble ease that entails. Tomorrow night is his big debut in the Free Verdi Company’s
Carmen
. Some directors of various opera company apprenticeship programs are supposed to be there. Perhaps they’ll come backstage afterward and give him their cards.

“Wait until you see it, Benna. The best Don José ever: Carlo Bergonzi meets Neil Sedaka meets Zelda Fitzgerald.” He regales me with some vocal calisthenics that sound inhuman, worse than fog horns. He laughs at my wince. Hank shambles over and asks him if he could not “make these such noises.”

“I have to have a wisdom tooth removed this afternoon. I’ve scheduled it now while I’m still employed and have insurance to cover it, so I suppose I should,” I say to Gerard, my mouth gluey with egg.

“Poor you.”

“But listen, I’ll be there tomorrow, munkface and all. I’ll come backstage and give you a rose and a cough drop.”

“Thanks,” says Gerard.

Darrel offers to pick me up from the dentist’s office, but I tell him nah, not to worry, I’ll be fine.

“Are you sure? I’m actually fond of dentists’ offices. They’ve got great chairs.”

And I say, “Sure as squash.”

He narrows his eyes. “I’ll try to be there just in case.”

The air downtown is slate cold, Christmas-shopping air. I step into Dr. Morcutt’s office (
“Morcutt?”
hooted Gerard. “You would
go to a dentist named Morcutt?”), and it’s stuffy and chemical, as if the place had just been painted and no one had opened the windows. It gives me a slight headache. I walk up to the receptionist and say, “I’m a little early for my appointment. Should I come back, walk around in the fresh air for a while, rather than wait in here?”

The woman at the desk, a Mrs. Janice Felds, according to a bar pin high on her left breast, looks at me, suddenly concerned. She stands up and presses my hand between both of hers. “You don’t look well,” she says, probing my eyes with hers, attempting to locate something in them, something serious in them, she’ll never find it. My face feels hot, my stomach bruised, my back clammy as a dock. Mrs. Janice Felds presses her hand against my forehead like she’s the school nurse.

“Come with me,” she says, and leads me into one of the examination rooms.

“Really, it’s no big deal,” I’m saying. “It’s only just the paint smell.”

“Sit down. Lie back,” says Mrs. Janice Felds, and I sit in the big dental chair, lean back while she cranks it into a horizontal position; someone walking by could see up my skirt.

The examination room looks suddenly odd to me. Instead of being crammed with dental equipment, it is big, with one long empty counter on the side—like at a vet’s, where everything is put away, out of sight, protected from the thrashing of terrified animals. It feels like a roller skating rink with just this spare dental chair at the center.

Now there are other people in the room. There is murmuring. I detect it. Someone presses a cold wet washcloth to my forehead. I begin to feel foolish, begin to sit up. “Really,” I say. “None of this is necessary.”

“Just rest,” says the other nurse, and I am made to recall a lover I had once who also hovered over me and commanded
things: Here, here, no here; relax, damn it. I look up and see three sets of nostrils and an ebony birthmark. The dentist comes in and takes my pulse. I close my eyes wearily.

“Really,” I continue to protest. “It’s only that you just painted in here. I sometimes get a little dizzy around fumes is all.”

Dr. Morcutt is troubled. He looks at me, like Janice Felds, searches vainly for a trace of substance in my face, in the smudgy, silly, crayoned and stained-glass windows of my soul. “But we haven’t just painted in here,” says the doctor. “We haven’t painted in here for two years.”

The extraction is a rape. Or a Caesarean. Some sort of untimely rip. Due to Dr. Morcutt’s concern for what he calls “patient management,” I’m given only the minimum local anesthetic, no general, no laughing gas, no funny business. He’s afraid I may have allergies.

“Hey. Do I have allergies,” I say, though I really don’t. I have fears.

It’s only one tooth, but it takes an hour to get it. Not only is it impacted, it’s committed as hell to remaining with the rest of my body and rather than surrender, it self-destructs, crumbles into twenty tough little bits and slivers, and the doctor sweats, says shit, chomps his fruit gum harder. A nurse behind keeps pulling up on my jaw, as if its attachment to my skull or neck were an irritating superfluity. To communicate my body’s complete disapproval of these goings on, I make low groaning sounds, which after a while I’m afraid sound like sex, so I stop. The tugging, scraping, snapping in my mouth is a war, a huge mean war, this is what it is to die, to be fighting dying, to be snatched, gouged. I keep thinking I’ll swallow my tongue or even that I already have. My jaw aches and bends. “Her jaw can’t take this,” the nurse behind me warns. “The bone’s giving way.”