Crossroads (4 page)

From the front Joe didn't look at all like Mark. He had dark eyes and freckles. He taught art at Silver Spring and a sculpture class at Princeton. His cousin, Irv, was in from San Francisco, where he worked for public broadcasting, and Irv's “high school sweetheart,” Ilene, from East Orange, hung on his arm. We stood on the patio with drinks in our hands, talking about whether New York was dangerous or not. Tom said it was definitely dangerous and he'd never live there and he hated it when Jennie had to go to a lecture or something. Jennie frowned and seemed tense. “Tom thinks the whole city is Harlem.” She passed a cheese platter. “You can go crazy out here, living in the sticks, if you don't go to the city once in a while.”

Irv loved San Francisco except for the cold and the fog, which he claimed hung over his head like the plague and kept his spirits low. “Seal Point, you know, Seal Point. I've been there six times and I've never seen a seal. All I see is fog and hear seals barking. For all I know it's recordings of seals.”

“Hey, Tom, the girls want some gin and tonics over here. Tom's a great guy,” Buzz said. He patted me on the back. “C'mon, Tomasino, the girls are thirsty.”

“I'll help you,” I said and wandered back into the house with Tom. Buzz and Janice accompanied us into the den, where the bar was set up. It wasn't clear which girls wanted gin and tonics or how many were wanted, but Tom started making five. Janice had just bought a new car, a Nova, and it was a gas guzzler.” You New Yorkers don't have to worry about that sort of thing, do you?”

“What sort of thing?” Tom asked, handing me a gin and tonic I hadn't asked for.

“Cars,” I said.

I went back out to the patio, where Jennie had bug bombs burning in red and green glasses to keep the biting insects
away and a faint odor of DDT hung in the air. Ted and Roberta moved outside as well. She asked me how I afforded keeping my car in the city. “Oh, I don't have a car. We were just talking about cars.”

Roberta said that the automobile was the state animal of New Jersey. Janice walked over. “You know,” she said to me, “I heard that planners are working on a roller-skating map of Manhattan. You know, what streets to skate on. Manhattan's falling into its sewers and they're designing roller-skating maps.” I told her I worked in slum renovation and didn't know about roller-skating maps. Joe wandered over with a little platter of cheese. When he smiled, his forehead wrinkled. He was tall and thick like a tree you could climb. Janice reached over and took some cheese and licked it. Her tongue was blue like a chow dog's. Joe munched on celery. “You girls talking shop?”

“Oh, not really,” I said. “Just talking.”

“I'm working on a series of paintings called
The City
.”

“Oh, that sounds interesting.”

Joe shrugged modestly. His straight hair fell to either side of his forehead and he kept brushing it away with a nervous hand. “You married?”

I laughed, amused at his directness. “Separated.”

“I know. Jennie told me. I'm divorced.” We both laughed, as if we were sharing a private joke. “Pretty awful, no?”

“The pits,” I said.

“How long's it been?” He sipped his drink.

“Since February.” It had been a long time since I tried to make conversation with a man I wanted to get to know, and I didn't know what to say next.

“Oh, now's the hardest time,” Joe said. I felt at ease. “I've been on my own for four years now. I got custody. My wife was from Thailand. She went berserk in a supermarket in Arizona. I don't even know what she was doing in Arizona.” He whipped out his wallet and showed me photographs of two dark-haired
but not very Oriental-looking children. “We were kids ourselves when we got married. Dumb mistake.”

“Yeah, I know,” I mumbled. Jennie waved at me from the kitchen, thinking I needed rescuing but ostensibly to hand me more food platters. “See you later,” I said to Joe, but as I drew away I experienced something I'd imagined lost to history, like Pompeii or Hannibal's horse. I wasn't even aware of it as I'd stood there talking with Joe, but as I walked away I felt myself pulled back to him as if by some magnetic field, and that pull left me lightheaded. Desire came creeping back as I scanned the heads to see where Joe was going, desire that had lain dormant since the winter, that had found its outlets mostly in the swimming pool and in some dreary masturbation, ever since that last night before he left, when Mark made wild, inspired, hypocritical love to me.

“Having a good time?” Jennie asked.

“I was talking with Joe.”

“Uh-huh, I saw.” She arranged cheese puffs on a tray. “His wife went crazy in Arizona. But he's got cute kids.”

She handed me a tray of ham and cheese, and I carried it back. Joe was in a corner, talking to Janice, who held him by the sleeve, whispering into his ear. I tried to see the expression in his eyes. I put the platter down and noticed a man I hadn't seen before standing in a corner by the buffet. He held a Coke in his hand and he looked crooked. At least he seemed crooked to me, but perhaps I was looking at him at an angle, or perhaps he couldn't make up his mind if he wanted to be there or not. He smiled and it was a half-smile. His arms were half-folded across his chest, the Coke was cocksided, his head was at a slant.

I went back into the kitchen for another tray. “That's Sean,” Jennie said. She whispered without changing her facial expression, the way people in spy movies do. “Don't take him too seriously. I don't.” But I could see where it might be difficult not to take him seriously. He stood alone in the corner
and it was clear he was simply bored with all of us. I put down a platter of egg salad sandwiches not far from where he stood, poured myself a glass of wine, and went back to join Joe.

As I passed, Tom caught me by the arm. “C'mon, you've gotta say hello to my friend. He's just back from the Coast. Yale graduate. Very smart.” Tom pointed to his brain. Then he dragged me over to meet the man in the corner. “Sean, this is Jennie's friend from way back. Our friend, Debbie. You guys talk.” Sean put down his Coke, rocked slightly on the balls of his feet, and extended a cold, damp hand. Now he was smiling. Or trying to smile.

We shook hands and his grip was firm. He apologized for his clammy palm; the Coke bottle had been very cold. He was big and he wore corduroy slacks and a blue shirt with rolled-up sleeves. His eyes were large and blue. They had an emptiness about them and his black beard made his eyes look bluer and emptier. “You from around here?” I asked, trying to sound the way I thought they might sound in that part of New Jersey.

He nodded. “My parents have a place up the road.”

“Oh, you're a farmer?” He rolled his eyes and shook his head. “A teacher?”

He looked at me, bored. “I'm a stuntman.”

“A what?”

“A stuntman, you know. I smash up cars and take punches for famous people.”

“Oh,” I said, “I've never met a stuntman.” He did not appeal to me, and yet I knew that by objective standards he was an appealing man.

“Now you have.” I expected him to yawn.

“It sounds interesting.”

He sighed slightly. “It's not very interesting.”

I'd heard his story before. He was on the way to make it big as a famous actor until someone found out he was a good athlete and now he was bitter. I looked at his arms. He had strong biceps with veins running through them. Thick, blue
veins. Mark's arms were white and limp. They looked like a woman's arms, except for the hair. But underneath they were very strong and those limp arms managed sixty pushups a morning. Mark had deceiving arms. “Anything I might have seen you in?”

“Oh, I had a bit part in the Vietnam War.”

I smiled. It was one of those odd and rare instances when I took an immediate and intense dislike to someone. When Joe waved at me from across the room, I was grateful for an excuse to walk away.

The guests left mostly in the same order they had arrived. Ted and Roberta had to drive the sitter home fairly early. Buzz and Janice kissed everyone on the cheek and said it was the best party they'd been to in decades. I watched as they put on their sweaters, jingled their keys. I walked outside and sat in one of the inner tubes on the old tree. As I rocked, the branch creaked.

Joe came outside to find me. “We'll be leaving soon.” He swung his legs into the inner tube beside mine and we swung in opposite directions but with a kind of strange syncopation. Buzz and Janice waved at us from the porch. “Nice meeting you,” Buzz called. “I'd like to see you again,” Joe said. “Will you be here for a while?”

I felt complacent. “I'll be here this week.”

“Good.” He rose, smiling. “I'll give you a call.”

He never did.

After everyone left, my eyes gazed in the direction where I thought New York City must be. A place that had been home to me and that I now faced with a kind of dread. It was the hour when shows were letting out, when the restaurants were getting crowded again. But here it was quiet and I felt safe. Even as a hand rested on the back of my neck, I knew nothing would happen to me out here.

“You should get some sleep,” Jennie said.

“In a little while.”

She asked me what I was looking for out there and I told her I didn't know but I thought I was looking toward Manhattan. She wrapped her arm around my shoulder. “Some planner you are. You're facing Pennsylvania.” She turned me toward Manhattan, where she thought I wanted to be pointed. I shuddered. “Do you want to talk?”

I shrugged. “What's there to talk about?”

“Look,” Jennie went on, “I'm not going to force you, but if you want to or need to talk, will you tell me?”

I told her I just missed him. There wasn't really much more to say. I couldn't say I wanted to get back at them. I couldn't even say that to myself. For a while we stood together, arms on each other's shoulders, facing a dark sky and a horizon, faintly illuminated, enough to let you know or at least suspect that America's most complex metropolis was just beyond these placid fields.

T
HE NEXT AFTERNOON
the crooked man I didn't like at the party drove up to the house in a shiny red Datsun. As he got out of the car and waved at me, I realized I couldn't remember his name. “Where are they?” he shouted, and I pointed to the barn, where Tom and Jennie were renovating a room. He nodded and came over and sat down beside me on the porch. “Good,” he said. “I really wanted to see you.”

I'd been reading an architect's report for a possible design perspective on the SAP project, and he picked up one of those reports, flipping through like a gambler shuffling cards. “My name's Sean.” He smiled. “Did you remember?”

“To tell you the truth, I didn't.”

He nodded. “I don't blame you. If I were you, I'd have forgotten immediately.” He ran his fingers through his thick, dark hair and, in the light of day, his face looked tired, his skin pale, as if he'd pulled an all-nighter, but he had wonderful eyes. I could see them clearly and now they seemed to sparkle, which they didn't do last night, even though he looked tired. “Well”
—he stretched back in the chair—“I came to apologize for being an ass last night.”

I laughed. “Oh, there's nothing to apologize for.”

He raised his hands, folded them in his lap, and leaned forward. “Yes, there is. I hate parties. I'm not very good at social gatherings. I was obnoxious. I'm not really a stuntman. That is, I'm a stuntman because I do stunts. I'm very athletic but it's not my goal and I don't plan on doing it forever.” He paused. “I don't know why I'm telling you this.”

“I don't either.”

He scratched his head. “Should I stop?” I wasn't sure what he should do or what I wanted to hear.

Then he apologized for apologizing. “It's this thing I have. I always feel like I've acted inappropriately. I'm always saying I'm sorry.” He said he always felt he had something to be sorry for.

I told him I didn't know what was worse. I'd been married to a man who never apologized to me except once in seven years in the note he left me on the kitchen table, saying he was leaving. “I don't know why I told you that,” I added.

“Because you wanted to.”

“No, I didn't.” I was flustered and confused and somehow he'd gotten me to confide in him the details of the demise of my marriage.

“Well, I'm sorry if I made you say something you didn't want to say.” He shook his head. “I'm apologizing again.”

“I think lots of men have a hard time saying they're sorry. My father never does.”

“Mine either.” He smiled and lay back in the rocker, arms folded across his chest.

Sean had an open invitation for dinner that he'd never taken them up on, Jennie told me as we scraped carrots over the kitchen sink. Tom wore his Yankees cap and shouted in the other room as San Diego trounced Pittsburgh. Beer cans were lined up on the coffee table in front of Sean. Tom wished
bursitis on any pitcher he didn't like; Sean popped open another beer and handed it to Tom.

Jennie hated it when Tom shouted about baseball, so she went into the den and stood in front of the television with her arms folded. “Are you going to get cleaned up for dinner or not?”

“I'm clean, I'm clean.” But Jennie wouldn't move away from the television until he agreed to put on a shirt for dinner.

We went down in the basement, where she kept frozen food the way pirates keep buried treasure. She pulled a string, turning on an overhead bulb, and opened a trunk big enough to house a polar bear. Inside were packets of meat, poultry, fish, all neatly wrapped in plastic and labeled in Jennie's prize-winning handwriting. She dragged out half a cow she said would “do” for tomorrow. The next freezer was a vegetable garden hit with an unexpected frost. She came up with cauliflower and string beans. Then there was a freezer for baked goods, an icebox for cold drinks. Rummaging in a deep freeze for a cheesecake, Jennie asked what I heard from my brother.