Better Than Running at Night (10 page)

"What do you do now?" I asked.

Her pursed lips warned me that what was to escape them next would be dangerously profound.

"What I'm doing now is a musical study on mislabeled organic objects. For example, I place headphones on a tomato and play Bach."

She lowered her voice, as if to let me in on a well-kept secret.

"And, you know, a tomato is mislabeled because we categorize it as a
vegetable,
but in reality it's
a. fruit,
you know?"

She touched my knee with her press-on claws.

"So, the question is: what exactly is the effect of Bach on a tomato?"

Yes, I thought, that's the question
exactly,
isn't it.

Nate was sitting on my doorstep when I came home from dinner that night.

I ran up the steps; I had to pee badly.

"I thought you couldn't see me until Friday," I said. It was only Wednesday.

"Yeah, I know. I can't hang out for long." He stood up slowly. "I just needed someone to talk to."

We went inside.

"I don't usually confide in people," he said, collapsing on my bed. "But you're so easy to talk to. You're a good listener."

"What's going on?" I asked, taking a seat beside him. I crossed my legs.

"I talked to my mom last night," he said. "She's getting married. She only met the guy on a cruise three months ago. I've never met him. But I already know I can't stand him."

I recrossed my legs in the other direction and held them tightly together.

He continued. "I was thinking about it today, and I think I'd probably hate anyone she married. I know she dated people after
Dad died, but she never talked about it, so I pretended it never happened. Now that she's getting married, I feel like she's betraying Dad. And it all seems so irrelevant because I never even knew him."

I wanted to put my arms around him and pull him close, but I was afraid to move.

"Does this sound crazy and selfish?" he asked.

"No, not at all," I said. "It's more understandable than you think."

My bladder panged, but I held it.

"I feel like I'm such a whiner," he said. "I just needed to talk to someone."

"Maybe it'll help if I tell you a story," I said, my heart pounding faster.

"Okay," he said. "But after that I'm gonna get some painting done."

I squeezed my legs tighter.

"The story starts in the late sixties," I said, not sure how to begin. "I'll tell it to you the way my mom tells it."

He settled back against my pillow.

"My mom says life was different then. People didn't worry about things like AIDS."

Nate smiled. "Those were the days. Must've been a total blast."

"Maybe for some people."

"I would've been one of those people."

"
Well,
back then my mom used to go to concerts and leave with no clothes. Sometimes she'd go home with a stranger and not remember how she got there when she woke up."

"Been there," Nate said.

I rocked back and forth. Just get to the end of the story, I told myself.

"On weekends she'd go party-hopping and do whatever drugs and whatever men she could lay her hands on. She'd use birth control if it was around, otherwise she'd use the 'pull-out' method—which my sex ed teacher said isn't a method at all."

"You do what you've gotta do," Nate said.

I play-shoved him. That was the last movement my bladder could handle. I got up and ran. Well, it looked like more of a drunken trot than a run. But at least I made it to the bathroom in time.

"What's going on?" Nate called.

Then he heard the answer to his question.

"Niagara Falls!" He laughed. "I thought maybe I'd offended you!"

"No," I said over the sound of my never-ending pee, "I've just been holding this a long time!"

"You should've gone before!"

"But I didn't want to leave in the middle of what you were telling me!"

"Ellie, you're too good to me!"

When I came out, I lay on the bed with my legs finally at a comfortable distance.

"What a relief," I said.

"I bet," he said. "But what about the end of your story? It was just getting interesting."

"Where did I leave off?"

"The pull-out method."

"Oh, right. Anyway, my mom met my dad at one of those crazy
parties. They dated on and off for years and eventually he told her she was his only reason for living. He stopped seeing other people. He wanted her all to himself, but she wouldn't have it."

"Nobody owns anyone else," Nate said.

"Just be quiet and listen to the story."

"Okay, sorry." He sat up straight and folded his hands in his lap. "I'll be good."

"
Anyway,
my dad used to get mad at her for not being around to answer his phone calls late at night. She'd tell him they weren't married and he'd say, Well maybe we should be! His parents were pressuring him to settle down, which was fine by my dad because he'd already found his sweetheart. But his parents thought my mom was a slut. Not daughter-in-law material."

Nate grinned and put his hands behind his head. His biceps contracted inside his sleeves.

"My dad's parents sent him on a three-month cross-country trip, hoping he'd hunt down a new woman. But he didn't return with the girl of his dreams, because she'd been running around town sleeping with the hippies of Manhattan."

Nate laughed.

I took a deep breath. My heart was pounding hard again. "While he was gone she had gotten pregnant."

"It happens," Nate said. "The price of having fun."

"No, but listen," I said. "You have to be serious if you want me to tell the rest."

"Okay, I'm serious." He scrunched his face up into a "serious" look. "Go on."

"Well, my mom was six weeks into it already. She confided in my dad, her only trustworthy friend, that she didn't know what to do because she wanted to keep the baby, but how could she support it herself?"

"That was you?"

I nodded. '"I know what you should do,' he told her. She expected him to suggest abortion. Then, as my mom says, he held her face in his hands and, with a triumphant grin, he said, 'Marry me.'"

"Why didn't you tell me before?" he asked, pulling me toward him by my armpits.

"I've never told anyone."

"But you knew I'd be able to relate," he said, squeezing me so hard I exhaled loudly.

"It was scary to tell you." I rested my head on his chest.

"Why scary?"

"Because what if I told you and you didn't react the way I wanted you to react?"

I heard his stomach gurgling against my ear. "How did you want me to react?"

"Just like you are."

My head rose and fell with each breath he took.

"I'm sorry," I said. "You have work to do. I kept you here longer than you meant to stay."

"No," he said. "Don't even think about that. I'm really glad you told me. I'll go to the studio in a little while. But I want to make sure you've said everything you want to say."

"My dad loves me like a real daughter," I said, making my eyes well up a little. "But at the same time—" I looked up at Nate and let a few tears sneak out. He pulled me on top of him and squeezed me tight. "At the same time, I just hate not knowing the real one." Nate wiped away my rolling tears with his thumb and smothered my face with kisses.

"I know," he whispered. "I know."

"Rose!" Ed shouted energetically.

"What!"

"Rose we have a special re—"

"What!"

"We have a special request for you today!"

"What's that!"

"We'd like for you to hold this violin and pretend you're playing it. Doesn't that sound like fun, Rose? Not your typical modeling job!"

There was nothing innately wrong with the concept, except that
Rose couldn't have been younger than 150. She was practically deaf, and I doubt she could hear herself think, let alone tune a musical instrument.

Ed presented the saggy, naked Rose with one of those scuffed-up violins from our still-life assignment and she yelled, "Oh, I used to play the fiddle! Hard to believe, ain't it?"

Within about twenty minutes of posing, Rose began to fall asleep. No, she was dying. Dying slowly with a wrecked violin in her drooping arms. And to top it all off, Ed played the Tchaikovsky violin concerto tape.

"Just like the real thing, right Ellie?" he said, pointing from Rose to the boom box and back again.

"What!"

"Never mind, Rose!" Ed said, rushing up to the modeling stand.

"What!"

"I said, Never mind, it's okay, just go back to posing!" he shouted, standing about a foot away from her.

Ed gave Rose more frequent breaks than the other models to keep her from completely conking out.

At the first break Rose went to her pocketbook and whipped out proof of her youth in a Ziploc bag: snapshots of herself outdoors, beautiful and unwrinkled.

"Come look, kiddies! You won't believe your eyes!" The three of us gathered around, passing the pictures to one another. Up close I saw that now she was missing most of her teeth.

"You were very beautiful, Rose," Ralph said.

"What!"

Ed came to the rescue. "Ralph was just noting what a knockout you are in these pictures, Rose!"

Sam turned to me so that no one else could see and gave the pictures the thumbs up sign, nodding slowly. I squinted at him. I couldn't believe Mr. Eye Roller was making a joke. His face flushed red and he quickly looked away.

"Oh, yes!" Rose yelled. "The men were quite taken with me! And can you believe I once played the fiddle?" she asked again.

Yes, it was hard to believe that Rose had once played the violin. It was a stretch to imagine her arthritic fingers moving at their own will. But it was even harder to believe she was still alive. And that she took off her clothes for a living.

"You look so natural with that violin, Rose!" Ed would call out from time to time, trying to keep her from collapsing in her chair. He was right; what could be more natural than a naked old lady supporting a beaten violin between her thin layered chin and misshapen hand?

Upon hearing Ed's voice Rose would wake with a start. Realizing she had an instrument in her grasp, she'd pluck haphazardly at the miserably out of tune strings, accompanied by a sunken grin.

On Friday Ed critiqued the Billy assignments. I had drawn myself peeking through a slightly ajar doorway behind Billy. The expression on my face was one of disgust, as if I had walked into my living room only to find my old overweight uncle with no clothes in Dad's armchair.

Ralph's drawing also depicted him standing behind Billy, but he held two fingers in a V shape over the naked guy's head. Although I can't say I thought his idea was great, I enjoyed imagining Ralph standing in front of the mirror with his two fingers extended for hours, laughing to himself about his little joke.

Sam had put himself in a seat beside Billy, facing forward and smoking a joint.

"Fantastic!" Ed shouted. "Utterly fantastic!"

My head was bobbing again from lack of sleep. Maybe if Ed gave us some real criticism, I'd have an easier time staying awake.

"These drawings all say something, don't you think? I gave you each the same assignment and you all came up with something different."

"Do you ever have anything negative to say about student work?" Ralph asked.

That woke me up.

"Interesting question, Ralph," Ed said. "Not very often! On occasion I'll get a student who doesn't want to do the work I assign. For example, they might come in and do a performance rather than actually make a drawing. I have very little patience for that!"

"What do you mean, a performance?" Ralph asked.

Sam shot me an uh-oh look.

"Well, what I mean, Ralph, is imagine that our friend Sam had come in here and lit up a joint in front of our class. That is a joint, isn't it, Sam? Not a cigarette?"

Sam's Adam's apple, his thyroid cartilage, bounced as he gulped. He nodded, pulling his cap forward.

"So imagine, Ralph, that Sam had come in here and smoked up instead of creating this drawing."

"Yeah, and why is that worse than drawing it? This doesn't seem like the kind of picture a teacher would approve of."

Another look from Sam.

"It's not that I approve of smoking, Ralph," Ed answered. "It's just more powerful to see Sam's interpretation of himself than to simply see him sitting in front of us. If you can believe it, in this context, there's more depth to the two-dimensional Sam than to the three-dimensional Sam! When Sam comes to class every day, he only shows us what he wants us to see of his personality. But
here in this picture, Sam looks more mysterious. As if he's thinking thoughts he would never tell us!"

"Like what?" asked Ralph.

"Well, I'm not going to venture to guess because it's not my place to do so," Ed said. "But it is interesting to speculate, isn't it?"

"I've never thought about it that way," Ralph said.

Neither had 1.1 sure hoped there was more going on in Sam's mind than it seemed. Pot, Phish, and doughnuts would get boring real fast.