Chilly Scenes of Winter (35 page)

“Peace. Look at the way you’re acting.”

“You mean if I’d been calm and subtle you would have come?”

“No.”

“Then I’m going to act this way. I’m going to talk truthfully.”

“Stop thinking about yourself and think about me. I need peace. I don’t need to be told what to do. I’ve lost Rebecca and my marriage has fallen apart and I can’t find a job, and you’re telling me it can be like it was before.”

“It can!”

“It can’t. I’m miserable. Before I was just unhappy.”

“A taxi driver! How the hell am I supposed to feel about that? You got in a goddamn taxi, and you let the driver pick you up.”

“So what?”

“That’s awful. It’s incredible. Taxi drivers don’t just pick up great women like you. Look at yourself. God, Laura.”

“I never saw as much as you did,” she says.

He gets up, legs shaky, and walks to the sofa. She is so unreasonable. He looks up at the picture on the wall: two parallel black lines are pushing a rainbow off the canvas. He looks at the rug: a circle of brown inside an oval of green, bordered with black. He wants to see something familiar—something from the old apartment.

“Isn’t there anything of yours here?” he says.

“It’s all back at the house,” she says. “I thought about going back to get some things, but I can’t face Rebecca.”

“She knows it’s not your fault, doesn’t she?”

“I don’t think seven-year-olds make intellectual distinctions.”

“Is there any chance of getting her?”

“Seemingly not. I’ve spoken to a lawyer. She
is
his daughter.”

“Maybe he’d let you take care of her because it would be better for her.”

“I don’t even know that it would. He’s nice to her. He’s her father.”

“But did you ask?”

“Yes.”

“He said no?”

She doesn’t answer. He stares at the little rainbow, at his feet on the rug. There is a magazine on the floor and a small minor. There are old wood floorboards, wide boards that have been painted brown. One of the panes in the window is cracked. The paint on the ceiling is chipped. The ceiling is painted light gray; it is white where the paint has peeled away. There are silver radiators. It could be a nice apartment, but it would need work. Strip the floors, paint the ceiling … he is already trying to imagine the place theirs, even though he has to leave it, even though she will probably leave it, too. She’d better leave it.

“If I come back tomorrow you might not be here.”

“I’ll be here after six. I have to go out looking for a job. And I’d better go to the store. After seven would be better.”

“You say that, but I might show up and you might be gone.”

“You mean deliberately? No, Charles.”

“Some goddamn taxi driver might pick you up.”

“I do not get picked up by just
any
taxi driver. Anyway, I don’t have the money for taxis.”

“So he was special to you. That’s what you’re saying?”

“I’m losing patience. I’ve been as nice to you as I can. Tomorrow I’ll even try to be in a better mood to put up with your telling me what to do with my life. Please go home and come back tomorrow.”

He simply cannot do it (“Closer, closer …”) He looks at his feet. They won’t move. He’s sure of it. He smiles at Laura. Isn’t she going to cut this out? Isn’t she going to come over and sit beside him? She stretches out on the mattress.

“I’m tired,” she says. “I was out all day.”

“Did you eat? I could take you out to eat.”

“No thanks. I think I’ll just get ready to go to bed.”

“But you do like me?” he says.

“Yes,” she says.

“And you’ll be here for sure.”

“Yes.”

He looks at the broken windowpane. He should offer to fix it. He doesn’t know how to glaze windows. He should find out and fix it tomorrow night He should demonstrate to Laura that he is very useful; there’s something to what she says—that he makes demands on her. He will make no demands at all, and will fix the window and offer to strip the floors. If he were only bigger, he could volunteer to go to her house with her and carry out furniture and paintings, but of course Ox would kill him or, even more degrading, just pick him up by the back of the neck like some trespassing cat, and drop him in the yard.

“Remember taking me to the zoo, and how upset I got when I asked what giraffes did for fun and you said, ‘How could they do anything?’ ”

“I should have thought of a nicer answer,” he says. “Like the cab driver Holden Caulfield asks about the ducks in winter.”

“That’s an awful scene,” she says.

He gave her
Catcher in the Rye
, and when she liked that he gave her
Nine Stories
, but after she read “A Perfect Day for Bananafish,” she couldn’t read any more. She even made him take the book back, and she knew that he already had a copy. She just wanted it out of her sight.

“I guess I’ll see you tomorrow, then,” he says.

He has to go. He shouldn’t press his luck. He rubs his shoes back and forth on the rug. He looks at the broken windowpane.

“Where’s the bathroom?” he says.

She points. He gets up, legs still shaky as hell, and walks around the corner to the bathroom. It is painted an awful shade of blue. There is a white shower curtain patterned with whiter flowers. Breck shampoo (not Laura’s—unless she’s changed) on the back of the toilet. He closes the door. He sits on the side of the bathtub, the curtain wadded beneath him. He just can’t go. If he stays in here for hours she might come to the door and ask if he is all right. He wants her to show concern. He wants her to act interested in him. When he was a kid, his mother used to ask if he was all right when he stayed in the bathroom too long. That annoyed the hell out of him. Mary Tyler Moore’s water-spattered face smiles up from the cover of
People
magazine, at his feet. Her roommate is messy. He looks behind him to see if Laura’s shampoo is in the tub. No. Where is Laura’s shampoo? He wants to smell it. He gets up and runs the cold water, puts his hand under it and raises the wet hand to his eyes. His eyes burn when he holds his hand against them. He sits on the small stool against the wall, looking at the toilet and sink. The music goes off in the living room. He hears Laura walk across the floor—the floor creaks—and then the music begins again. It is classical music, but he doesn’t know who. Mournful music. Albinoni, perhaps. It would be nice to bring her some records. She wouldn’t like flowers (he tried that in the past, and it turned out that she felt sorry for them because they had been cut off the plant and would soon die. She has a way of feeling sorry for things, even inanimate things), but she would probably like some records. He could bring wine and records. He could bring a diamond ring if he had the nerve. He could leave the bathroom if he had the nerve, if he could go out there and say good-bye. He cannot. He gets up and stands at the sink, running the cold water again. He holds his hand under it, turns the water off and rubs his hand down his face. After all this time he is seeing Laura again, and he is locked in her bathroom. He shakes his head—not to deny it, but because it’s so ridiculous. As ridiculous as driving to her house and looking at the lights, imagining what room she might be in when she’d already moved. Ox is in the house now, and his daughter, Rebecca. He still has Rebecca’s bird in his glove compartment. He would give it to Laura, but it might make her sad. She’d feel sorry for the bird. To say nothing of the fact that it would remind her of Rebecca. Laura buys plants that are dying in supermarkets—ones that have four or five leaves, marked down to nineteen cents, because she feels sorry for them. Couldn’t she feel sorry for him? Sorry enough to go back to his house tonight? He will never find out standing in the bathroom. But it smells good in the bathroom, and as long as he’s in the bathroom he doesn’t have to leave. He will never tell Sam about this. He probably will tell Sam, hoping for sympathy, since Laura probably isn’t going to give any. The metal fixtures are very bright, the floor is dirty. There is a small red rug, with hairs all over it. He opens the door, goes back and turns off the light, and walks slowly to the living room.

Laura is lying on the mattress. She sits up when he comes back.

“I thought you might be sick,” she says. “Why did you think that?”

“Were you? You look pale.”

“No,” he says.

“That’s what I thought. Rebecca was sick so much that the slightest thing makes me think somebody’s sick.”

“I was just standing around in there.”

“What?”

“I mean, I was washing my face.”

She frowns. “But you’re okay?”

“Yeah.”

She turns on her side, propped on one elbow. Why did she pluck her eyebrows? She looks constantly quizzical. “What record is that?” he says.

“I don’t know. One that Frances had on. You can look, if you want.”

“No,” he says. He sits on the side of the mattress.

“Would he let you take your things?” Charles says.

“Jim, you mean?” He nods.

“I guess so. I don’t think there are bad feelings.” She sighs. “But I don’t really have anything. The furniture isn’t nice. He bought it.”

“It’s half yours.”

“I can’t haul it around like a pack rat,” she says. “Might as well leave it. I’m not attached to furniture, anyway. Sometime I’ll get around to going back for my clothes.”

“You could store anything you wanted at my house.”

“That’s nice of you. I might.”

He thinks about having boxes of her clothes near him. He could raise the lid and—better than a genie—Laura’s clothes. They would all smell like Vol de Nuit.

“Cookbooks,” she says. “I guess I should get them. Most of them are out of print. And the ones the French woman gave me.”

“It must be strange to walk out and leave all that stuff. It’s sort of the reverse of me walking into my grandmother’s house and being faced with all of it.”

The half-smile.

“Can I go to the store for you tomorrow?”

“I’ll have time,” she says. “And at the moment I can’t think of the ingredients. It’ll come to me in the store.”

“Would you like me to take you out to dinner first?”

“Let’s just eat here. I don’t feel like going out right now.”

“Whatever you want,” he says.

“I’m going to go to sleep. Come back tomorrow at seven,” she says.

“Okay,” he says. He does not move. He wants to say: Could I watch you sleep, Laura? He would just sit there and not make a sound all night. He has better sense than to ask—but not enough to leave.

“Don’t worry about the cab driver,” she says. “I wasn’t interested.”

“Good,” he says.

He gets up and looks at the record. It is Albinoni. The crack in the windowpane. At least the apartment is well heated. He remarks on this.

“You’re as trying as Rebecca.
Good night,”
she says.

“Good night,” he says. He even walks to the closet and gets his coat out. She gets up, then, and stands by the door. Without high heels on, she is shorter than he is. He puts his hands on her shoulders. She puts her arms out. He hugs her. He will never be able to let go. But what to do. It’s a gamble, but it’s all or nothing. He picks her up a few inches off the floor (she giggles) and waltzes her into the living room, spinning and dipping, dancing fast around the floor, the old boards creaking like mad. He hums to the music. He has Laura, and they are dancing a beautiful waltz, completely out of time with Albinoni. She is telling him to stop, and he is swirling, remembering, suddenly, Pete asking him what dances he knows. Pete, in the elevator: “Young people dance nowadays, don’t they?”

“La, la,” Charles sings, and with a final dip deposits her on the floor. He stands back and looks at her, but he doesn’t see her clearly. He had his eyes squeezed shut for the dip, and the light is blinding. Is she happy or angry? She smiles the half-smile.

“Go,” she says.

“I’ll see you tomorrow,” he says, and goes to the door. He listens. No floorboards move behind him. If he turns and looks at her, he will never go. She says she wants him to go. He opens the door and walks out into the hallway. He leaves the door open behind him, but he walks all the way to the elevator without hearing it close. It is too silent in the elevator. He worries that it will crash. And where did he park, exactly? The cold air outside makes his face burn and he runs for the car, hoping that the tires aren’t slit. They are not. Neither has he forgotten the key. He gets in the car and starts it, his hand shaking. Someone on the radio is droning the news. He listens and gets more and more depressed until he realizes that he can turn it off. He does not have to hear Henry Kissinger’s well-modulated voice, speaking the words Henry Kissinger always speaks. With the radio off, he feels a little better, but it’s still too silent. Few cars are out this late, and the lights are flashing yellow. That means it’s after midnight. How did that much time go by? He says Laura’s name out loud a few times, to interrupt the silence. He puts on the heater, and by the time he is halfway home his legs have stopped jerking. He watches the speedometer and the rearview mirror; this is the time of night cops like best, watching for drunks speeding home. He would not want to be given a sobriety test. He knows he could not walk a straight line. He would lurch and weave and stand shaking in front of the policeman. He drives five miles below the speed limit, and has to stop at every light that isn’t just flashing. Well, it wasn’t a bad visit. He can’t tell if anything he did was very right or very wrong. He stayed too long. She kept telling him that. But other than that, he didn’t do too badly. Tomorrow he will do better. And she said the taxi driver didn’t mean anything to her. A taxi driver. Jesus.

J.D.’s car is still at his house, parked on the street. Charles pulls into the driveway—it seems steeper than usual, or perhaps he’s just a little sick to his stomach—and turns the ignition off and gets out. He walks to the front door and opens it. J.D. is passed out on the sofa, a blanket over him. The dog barks a greeting, and J.D. groans and rolls over to face the back of the sofa, the blanket falling on the rug. Charles picks up the dog, strokes it, and walks through the living room to his bedroom. The light is on in Sam’s room, and Sam gestures for him to come in.