Crossroads (7 page)

“Not until it's definite. I'm superstitious. But it will change my life.”

I tugged at Zap's sleeve. “Let's go for a walk. I want to go for a walk with you.”

We headed down the hill toward the woods, past the pond. At the pond Zap picked up a rock and hurled it at the flock of wild geese. I'd never seen him do anything like that before. “What's wrong?”

“Nothing. Just thought they could use some exercise.”

We kept walking but I knew something was wrong. “Where do you want to go?” he said.

“Around the farm.”

He nodded, slipping his arm through mine, and we walked in silence.

Zap bent down and picked up a small insect that looked like a blade of grass. “Look at this,” he said, “the perfect camouflage.” The insect, walking across his hand, looked pretty nervous, without the grass to hide in. He put it back down. “Must get crazy out here, without anywhere to go.”

I bent down and looked at the bug. “You talking about Jennie?”

“She's not happy. It's obvious. She's like a stiff. Hardly talks. You know, I know her pretty well. She hasn't laughed since I got here.”

“You only got here a few hours ago.” The insect had disappeared back into the grass, and we started walking again. I slipped my arm through his. “Maybe we weren't ever really friends. We were always so different.”

Zap shook his head. Releasing my arm, he put his arm on my shoulder and I put my arm around his waist. He had the tight, smooth abdominal muscles of a swimmer and, even
though he was slim, he was strong. “You weren't different. She's just unhappy.”

“What're you going to do about it?”

He looked at me, surprised. “I don't know.” He changed the subject. “Tell me about this guy Sean.”

“He's awful.”

“He doesn't seem awful.”

I glanced at him. “You liked him?”

He nodded. “Yes, I liked him.”

“Well, I don't like him.”

“I don't see why not. He's got a nice smile and a good handshake. He certainly is good-looking.”

“I hadn't noticed.”

“You're in worse shape than I thought.” He whistled through his teeth. “You don't even know a nice guy when you see one. So,” his voice dropped low, “has Jennie said anything to you about me?”

“You just got here.”

“I mean before. Did she ask about me?”

I shook my head. “She just asked if I'd heard from you.”

He sighed, as if he'd expected to hear something spectacular after all these years. “I mean, what'd you think she'd say?”

“I don't know. I thought she might have said something about my letters.”

“You mean you were corresponding?” I found myself growing irritated with him and with Jennie. Why hadn't she told me they had been writing? And he was acting as if he wanted to find out if I knew something I already knew. I snapped at him. “I didn't know it mattered so much to you. Then what'd you bother bringing Anna here for?”

“I wish you hadn't said that,” he snapped back.

“It isn't serious with her.”

“That doesn't mean I don't care.”

We reached the stream at the edge of the woods and sat
down on two rocks, our feet dangling just above the water. We removed our shoes and socks and let our toes touch the water, which was freezing cold. “I just think you could be doing better for yourself.”

“I always thought you could too. I mean, Anna's not a civil rights attorney or whatever Mark was, but she's not a son of a bitch either.”

“There were some very good things about Mark.” I started kicking the water with my feet. “You just never liked him, that's all.”

“I never liked what he did to you, that's for sure. It didn't have much to do with him. I thought he made you act in unnatural ways.”

A school of fish swam beneath our feet and we watched them pass. It used to enrage me when Zap said bad things about Mark, but now I wanted to hear them. The fish kept our attention long enough that we could talk and not look directly at one another while we dealt with a delicate subject. “What ways?”

“Oh, you were always worried. Would Mark think this or that? You never seemed to know what he was going to do. You seemed to be hanging on a cliff for about seven years.”

Zap started skipping stones. I climbed off my rock and waded over to his. I sat beside him. He wrapped his arm around me. “He made you doubt yourself. That's why I didn't like him. You never doubted yourself before you married him. Or maybe you married him because you doubted yourself and you thought he was so terrific.”

“I was very young and you didn't know him well. He really is a very sensitive man, deep down.”

“I couldn't dig that deep.”

I kissed him on the cheek. “I haven't been very happy lately.”

“I can imagine.” He laughed. I'd written him long letters
about Mark and Lila. Lila to Zap was a vague childhood memory, someone he recalled from the dozen or so women whom I sometimes called my friends. But not one of our close crowd. Just a face that didn't mean much to him then. He knew Mark was living with her only five blocks away from our apartment. Zap tossed a stone and helped me up. “I just never liked him to begin with.”

“Why did you come here?” I rose and dusted myself off.

“I came to see you. And I came to see Jennie.” He shook his head. “She's not happy. Look, Debbie, I came to see both of you. But whatever it was between me and Jennie a long time ago, it hasn't gone away. I can't describe it.”

I told him he didn't have to. I knew as well as anyone what he was talking about.

I knew he'd had her once, very briefly, on a mosquito-filled beach the summer before the alewives lay rotting on the sand. Technically he'd lost his virginity with her but she hadn't lost hers with him. He'd entered her and she told him to pull out, which he did before she could no longer call herself a virgin but not before he came inside of her, and Jennie spent one terror-stricken month, waiting to show signs of being pregnant and refusing to repeat the experience with Zap. He told me this one miserable night during the month when Jennie refused to try it again.

So he pulled out but he'd held on, living with the sense that he had something left to finish. His whole life had something incomplete about it. “I want to spend time with her,” he repeated.

“So spend time with her.”

“Do you think she wants to?”

I shrugged. “How should I know? We should get back.”

“Look, I haven't seen anything better.”

“Anyone,” I corrected him.

He started walking. “I feel something when I'm with her.”

I paused, with my hands in my pockets. “You know, I married the man I wanted to marry. That's the truth. I loved Mark and he was exactly what I wanted.”

“What are you saying?”

“Sometimes we kid ourselves about what we feel.”

He put his hands in his pockets. “I've had a long time to think about it.”

“Too long, if you ask me. You don't even know her anymore.” He was walking ahead of me back to the house. “So do what you want!” I shouted at him.

 

In the afternoon everyone who hadn't been on the motorcycle wanted to go for a ride. I sat on the porch, sipping iced tea, and watched as they left and returned. I wanted to work on my report but I was too shaken by the talk with Zap. So I just sat and watched as they came and went, and no one seemed to come back the same way they'd left.

Brave Sean returned a little shaky and said with a nervous laugh, “I'd rather drive cars off cliffs, I think. Your brother drives like a maniac.” Tom, who'd left sullen and tense, came back smiling. Anna, who'd gone laughing, returned glum and I sensed there had been some discussion that upset her. And Jennie, who went last and was gone the longest—who left her usual orderly self—came back all disheveled, face dirty, hair out of place. “I'm going to take a shower,” she said.

She returned a little later, wearing a pair of snug-fitting jeans and an Indian blouse with a bright red and blue print and no bra. She leaned on the railing of the porch, combing out her wet hair in the sun. “So who's ready for drinks? And sandwiches. I'll make some sandwiches.”

“I'll help,” Tom offered, rising from the rocker.

“No, dear, you sit. Let me do it.” She motioned him back down and, as if she had special power in her fingers, he sat back down. She returned a few moments later with a tray of tall
glasses, gin and vodka and tonic, sprigs of mint, limes. “Honey, can you tend bar?”

“So you think you'll go back to medical school?” Sean asked Zap.

“What?” Zap looked at Sean as if he'd never seen him before. “School? I think I'll go back.”

“I kept dropping out of Yale. I finally finished.”

“State schools are different.” Zap spoke perfunctorily.

“Can't afford school anymore,” Tom put in with unusual force. “I don't know how I'm going to send the kids.” He was pouring drinks.

“I'm going to make sandwiches,” Jennie said, jumping up again.

“I'll help,” Zap said. I waited for her to tell him she didn't need any help but instead she waited for him at the screen door. The door banged shut. Anna glanced at the door when it banged. Tom was passing out drinks.

Sean engaged Anna in a conversation. Or at least he tried to. He began now with how she reminded him of Bibi Andersson with a little Liv Ullmann thrown in. He went on to discuss Bergman's notion of female fantasies in
Cries and Whispers
, the meaning of silence, his idea of the Swedish winter. He skipped on to talk about Bergman's tax evasion, his breakdown, on to deserters and Vietnam, to the Helsinki pact, to Kissinger, revolutions, treaties, disarmament, Swedish women. Tom rocked back and forth, sipping gin and sucking in his cheeks as if he were about to explode. Anna smiled and nodded but it seemed she had nothing to say.

“A lot of suicides in Sweden,” Sean went on. “I hear it's the largest percentage in the world. They attribute it to the welfare state.”

“Oh, really, I didn't know.”

“Suicide's the most selfish thing you can do,” Tom said rather mechanically.

“Well, in Sweden they're very selfish,” Sean said.

“No, we aren't,” Anna protested.

“I hear in Sweden a pack of cigarettes costs two dollars.” Tom leaned toward me. “A beer costs five. Inflation is terrible. I'm not going to be able to send my kids to college at this rate.”

He was leaning so close to me that I could feel his breath on my face.

“I think I'll help,” I said. I got up and so did Tom. “Me too,” he said, but I motioned him down with my hands the way Jennie had done.

I walked through the living room and the dining room and, for some reason, I was completely shocked when I saw them in the corner of the kitchen, Zap with his arms tightly around Jennie, and Jennie with her face buried in his chest. I don't know why it surprised me so much. I'd seen them kiss before when we were kids. I'd seen them kiss on the rides at Riverview, even on the parachute, where nobody wants to kiss. I'd seen them kiss on top of the bluff where we lived and on the Indian trails, under the old hunchback tree and in tons of parking lots. I'd hung around with them since we reached puberty, sometimes spying, sometimes tracking down their panting breath to save them from discovery.

I'm not sure what I felt when I walked into the kitchen and watched them. I know I felt surprised. Jennie's spine was pressed against the Formica counter, her hips thrust against Zap's, and his hands cupped her breasts. She kissed him on the neck and whispered indistinguishable words into his ear. It was dim in the kitchen but not so dim that I couldn't see Zap's hands, gliding along her ribs and trying to tear her blouse in two.

Later that evening Sean asked me if I wanted to go with him for a walk by the pond. I didn't want to go with him, but I also didn't want to be with anyone else. I've always had a difficult time saying no. As we walked, he told me he thought
he'd gotten a job as an assistant director on a major motion picture. His agent would let him know in a few weeks. “An Arthur Hansom film, do you believe it?” He lit a joint and said how nice it was to come home to New Jersey once in a while. I'd never heard of Arthur Hansom at the time. “You aren't listening,” he said to me finally. “What's on your mind?”

“Nothing, just thinking.”

“I like your brother.”

“He likes you.”

We walked as far as the pier, then sat down. For a few moments we didn't talk. “This job,” he said at last. “It would be a big deal.”

“I'm glad.”

He took his hand and put it under my chin. “May I kiss you?”

“That's the last thing I want you to do.”

I expected some kind of a struggle. Instead he laughed. “What's the first thing?”

“I don't know.”

“Usually I don't ask if I want to kiss someone. I just go ahead and do it. But you look like you needed to be asked.”

“That's right,” I said, getting up. I started back toward the house. Sean didn't move. “You coming or staying?”

“I think I'm staying.”

They'd all gone upstairs by the time I got back. Zap had left me warm milk on the stove, with a note that said he'd see me in the morning but he was bushed. We always brought each other warm milk when we were kids. A fire smoldered in the living room even though it was a summer's night, but because it was cool outside the heat felt good.

I decided to work. I got my briefcase and propped my feet up on the coffee table. Inside my briefcase was a map of Manhattan with several plastic overlay sheets and colored crayon markers. There was another detail map of the Bronx and sev
eral aerial photographs of the specific area I was writing about. I would have to describe that area in minute detail.