Eye to Eye (29 page)

“Sounds good,” Earl says, taking the final bite of his steak. He's chewing thoughtfully when we both hear someone calling his name, all squeaky and excited.

“Earl!”

Before I see her, I know it's Katie. What in the hell is she doing here?

“Hey, Earl-y,” she says.

Earl-y?

She's with an older man who, I hope, is her father. His thinning black hair is combed back, sleek and greasy, and he's wearing a white silk shirt, khakis and sneakers. Very chic. Or something. She's hardly paying attention to him, she's slobbering over Earl so much.

“Hey, Katie,” Earl says, tense. He grabs my hand under the table as if to say, do not go postal. “Who's this you got with you?”

“Oh. I almost forgot.” Katie tugs on the man's arm. “This is Reginald. We met at the bar. He's recently divorced,” she says, tugging on her pink belly shirt. “He lives in Bel Air and I'm just showing him the neighborhood.” Her hair is in two ponytails, which at twenty-six she can barely get away with.

Reginald gives her a look that says,
Bitch, tell everybody my business, why don't you,
but then he composes himself and puts his arm around Katie's waist. “Hello, everyone,” he says.

Katie still hasn't thrown in the towel. She's looking at Earl as if he's her last supper, meanwhile, she and Reginald are blocking all the waitstaff's way, standing around like they are.

“Reginald, this is Earl, Vanessa, and…” She raises an eyebrow at Bita.

“Bita,” Bita supplies, picking at her bread. She shoots me a look that says, don't get crazy.

Hard not to. “It's Veronica, Katie. You have to know that by now, as many months as you've been chasing Earl and pretending to ignore me.”

“Veronica Williams,” Earl warns, part amazed, part keeper of the peace. “Easy now.”

Bita drinks, long and silent from her water glass, and I know she's thinking that this little catfight is
so
not good for the sisterhood, but I don't care.

“I'm sure!” Katie says, looking at me like I'm crazy.

“Honey.” Reginald turns to her. “We should sit down now.”

“Yeah,” I say. “Go eat something. You look hungry.”

“Ron,” Earl warns again. But Katie and Reginald are already walking away. “See you later, Earl-y,” she singsongs, as Reginald leads her no doubt toward her life of trophy wife-dom. I share this theory with Bita and Earl.

“Naw,” Earl says, “I don't believe I see that lasting for the long haul.”

“And you.” I scoot away from Earl. “I've never seen you tell her to really and truly knock it off. You just let her get away with murder.” Maybe it was my two glasses of wine, but I was suddenly pissed at Earl and his humoring Katie all this time.

“I have to go to the bathroom,” Bita tells us, and carefully lays her napkin on her chair before hurrying off.

Earl lays his napkin on the table and shifts his body to face me. “We worked all this out, didn't we?”

“You've never, ever told her off, not really and truly, not that I've ever heard.”

Earl strokes his face and blows out a puff of air. He rubs his palms on his jeans and shakes his head. “You're going to make this our third big fight? Over the same thing?”

“Tell me I'm wrong.” I glare at Katie and Reginald across the room. She's laughing and tossing her hair all around, not eating her bread, even though the waiter had brought it to them right away. Typical.

“I got one word for you. Ian.” Earl takes my hand.

“I have no idea what you're talking about.”

“Remember when we were on about Ian the other day, and you said he was just a kid, trying to figure himself out, that he wasn't a threat to you, no how, no way?”

“Uh-huh.” I'm coming down from my sudden, irrational anger. It was Katie and her True Religion jeans and her calling me Vanessa that upset me. I squeeze Earl's hand and slide closer to him on the bench.

“Well, that's Katie. A kid. Harmless. Never going to be a threat to me or you, so ain't no need of me paying her no mind, not anymore.”

I
guess.
And just like that, I'm almost feeling bad for Katie, for the fact that she's got a whole mess of mistakes ahead of her, a whole lot of stumbling around. Earl is right. I fast-forwarded Katie's life and if she didn't wise up, she was going to be stuck with some guy who doubled as her dad. She was a kid, making kid mistakes. But me, I had the higher ground. Thank God I was a grown-up and picking drunken fights in a restaurant for no reason at all.

We have some Frangelico after our meal, which Earl doesn't drink, and some tiramisu, which Earl doesn't eat. He just has another beer. “If it ain't plain and simple chocolate cake like Mamaw makes, I don't want none.” And he waits until Bita and I are good and drunk to ask me if I wouldn't like to take a trip to Langsdale with him, to see some family and be there with Doris for Zach's theater opening.

“You're kidding, right?” I ask Bita if she wants the last bite of tiramisu and she pats her stomach and says no way. “It took me nearly half a year to get Langsdale out of my blood, and now you want me to go
back?
And we're just barely getting back in the black. Can we afford it?”

“Emergency credit card,” Earl says. “We'll manage.”

“I dunno know, Earl.” I scrape my fork on my plate, playing with leftover icing. “Seriously?”

“I ain't been home in a long, long time, Ronnie. It's time I go back and it's a good time to go, since Zach's doing his thing then.” Earl gives me one of those soft looks with those blue eyes and long, sandy eyelashes, and “no” is out of the question.

Bita waves our waiter down for the check and I suddenly wonder if she's game.

“How about you? Want to go to Indiana?”

“For
what?
” Bita takes one last bite of tiramisu.

Good question. “I don't know, it'd be fun? Plus, you're a single woman now. You could leave L.A. for a few days. You have no one to answer to.” I'm half kidding, but I
do
think it would be fun to have Bita there.

“Except myself,” Bita says. “No offense, Earl, but I didn't fall in love with Langsdale the few times I was there.”

“Well, you weren't shown the right way.” Earl stretches and yawns. “I could show you all the good stuff about Indiana. And, I got a cousin.” Earl winks at Bita. “Y'all ready to go?”

More irony: here in this restaurant is the first time I've felt as though my life were truly coming together, not in the way I expected, but in a way that I like very much and yet, here we are, talking about returning to Langsdale. I knew, of course, that Earl would always do so from time to time, but not me, not after
F: The Academy.

Doris says that I will be strung up and burned at the stake for the book, but I think that, if it's basically true, the folks at Langsdale University will appreciate it.

We shall see.

Among the academic hair-splitting debates that drove me to near insanity while I was preparing for my Ph.D. oral exams is the difference between modernism and postmodernism. Suffice it to say that had my dissertation committee read my little explanation of modernism, I would still be underlining literary theory in the dark corners of the Langsdale University library with a dog-eared copy of “Ph.D.s for DUMMIES” close by my side. However, since I am no longer forced to be in Langsdale, I am at gleeful liberty to continue with my little definitions. For postmodernism, my favorite definition is that it's very much like modernism, only there's none of that sad longing for the past, for the fallen whole subject. Instead, the postmodern subject revels in her fragmentation.

That, I have decided, will be my theme for the week: reveling in fragmentation. Atlanta Doris will allow a space for her latent Langsdale Doris, much as she loathes her memories of that particular incarnation. Yesterday, December 15, marks the first day of my return to Langsdale since leaving for Atlanta. Zach was nouveau-boyfriendly enough to meet me at the airport, easing me more gently from the fifty-degree Atlanta winter, to the twenty-degrees-with-the-sun-shining butt-cold deep freeze of Langsdale.

Today, we're getting ready for Ronnie and Earl's arrival. They actually came into town three days earlier, but went to a family reunion at one of Earl's relative's farms just outside of Bean Blossom. I received one broken phone message from Ronnie, who said Earl's relatives were hilarious, all wanting to know if he'd met Steven Spielberg, and why he was getting so skinny, and if the women were really as pretty as all that. Not one had heard of the movie he'd been in. They were evidently far more excited about his upcoming commercial for Dr. Scholl's foot supports.

“Hope things are good with Zach,” she concluded.

And thus far, they have been. Having not seen him for the past four months, it was a little like unwrapping a Christmas present that you'd picked out in July. Sort of like what I remembered, but not quite. In this case: better. In fact, I can't help but half wonder if Zach does better in my absence than my presence. Don't ask what I'd been expecting with the “Langsdale Lounge”—something scary, like a converted Subway restaurant with cheap tables and some crazy eggplant-colored paint job. But no. Zach was clearly possessed of redecorating genius. The place looked like a fifties cocktail lounge worthy of Sinatra or Sammy Davis Jr. Red curtains along the walls, dim lighting, beautifully intimate tables, and enough seating for at least a hundred.

“I'm working on the liquor license,” he explains, unveiling the space to me for the first time. “Then I'll really be raking in the dough.”

Looking around the space, I felt so proud of him that I could barely find words. It's a funny moment when the person you've been with reaches their potential, even if it conflicts with your vision of what the two of you might have been together. Zach the decade-plus student, Zach the knitter, Zach the career jumper, Zach the occasional dater of lesbians and adolescents, Zach the caring and engaged teacher, Zach of the unwashed hair and three-day shadow—all of these had been manifest intermittently throughout our time together, but never Zach the kick-ass businessman. I wanted him to know how much I admired what he'd done—even if I'd spent a solid four months pissed off about it. I wanted, also, to pull him behind one of those velvet curtains and have a cinematic fade-to-black scene of our own. Our time apart had made him a slight stranger again, and there was something vaguely erotic about the feeling.

And because I am such a champion at expressing my rich and complex inner life, I said, “A Jim Carrey retrospective plus a liquor license in Langsdale, you won't even have to bother buying lottery tickets.”

Zach laughed. He looked older to me, but older in a good way. Like his latent Tommy Lee Jones craggy-faced sexiness was starting to bloom. He was wearing the moss colored J. Crew sweater that I'd bought him last Christmas because it fulfilled all my latent lumberjack fantasies, and in loose-fitting Levi's with hiking boots, it was total hippie porn. I took his hand in mine and pulled him closer.

“Did I tell you how good you look?” he asked. “It's true. It's like you've really come into your own in Atlanta.”

I put my arms underneath his sweater, beneath his T-shirt, and rubbed the warmth of his chest, the tangle of hair beneath.

“God,” I said, “You sound like my freaking father or something.”

Clever man he is, he had unhooked my bra without my even noticing.

“Don't get oedipal on me now, baby,” he whispered.

As he kissed me I knew that what was going to happen next, had it been projected on the screen, would have made the “Langsdale Lounge” a theater of an entirely different kind.

 

For the next two days Ronnie, Earl and I helped Zach with last-minute preparations. We made sure that the tablecloths were clean and matched, that he'd hired enough help, that the copy of Baby Jane had arrived and was put in a safe yet easily remembered place. It was funny to see Zach so nervous, and it brought out the best in him. I even had a moment where, after he'd set out breakfast and headed for the library (“I know you won't be mad about this, Doris, but I have to stay on the dissertation or it just gets away from me.”), when I wondered if he hadn't become out of my league in my absence. I ignored the fruit and yogurt that he'd left and met Ronnie for an artery-clogging fat-fest at Ralph's Country Boy.

They say you can't go home again, but whoever “they” are, “they” clearly weren't from Langsdale, Indiana. The conversation in the next booth is so stereotypically Langsdale that it almost feels like a setup. Two men in plaid shirts and John Deere hats discussing at length the nuances of which guns were best for hunting, and which for home protection.

Ronnie looks at me. “Can you believe we both
lived
here? And had the nerve to think we were normal?”

Ronnie was bundled up in about fifty layers of clothing, including a pair of fingerless gloves that she refused to take off, even indoors. She reminded me of the little match girl.

“I dare say we might have stood out. This is a crazy question, but do you think that Zach is now too good for me?”

Ronnie gazes at the ceiling with her “why, God, why?” expression. “I know we're back in Langsdale for sure because you're acting crazy again.”

“It's not crazy,” I say. “Maybe it's true. Maybe it seemed like I was doing well out of the gate, getting a job and getting out of here, but now look at where you and Zach and Earl are. You've got a veritable cottage industry tutoring in Los Angeles, Earl is poised to be the next Hollywood hottie, and Zach is this born-again entrepreneur. Only I am plodding along the charted course, reliving my exact life in Langsdale, but with no friends and a slightly bigger salary.” I push a particularly greasy link of sausage to the side of my plate. “And better food.”

Ronnie blows across the top of her coffee.

“Don't you think your exaggerating just a little? And aren't you happy for Zach?”

“No to your first question and yes to the second. I'm happy for all of you. I just feel like everyone has made some quantum leap forward, and I'm just coasting along my once-chosen path. Did I tell you that I haven't even written a poem since I've been in Atlanta? Four months and no poem.”

I hate that Langsdale is doing what it always did to me, bringing out my anxieties and turning me into a quivering mass of insecurity and self-doubt. Ronnie is wisely choosing not to humor this line of thinking at all. Instead, she flagged the waitress for extra biscuits.

“Because, what,” she asks, and not too friendly, might I add. “Wonder Woman would have written a poem? You remember how hard it was to get that job? And you just moved, you're still settling in.”

I eat the final bite of my poached eggs. “I think, I can't say for sure, but I think that black Doris would have written at least a sonnet or two.”

“I can tell you one thing—black Doris definitely wouldn't be bitching that her man got a job. Black Doris would have a lot more street sense than her crazy cracker cousin, white Doris.”

“White Doris
can
be a little annoying. I think she's sorry.”

“I think she better eat that last bit of bacon, or black Ronnie might have to take charge of the situation.”

I push my plate in her direction, and Ronnie snags the last bit of meat.

“Sooooo,” I say. “You've been quiet, but wasn't the cover of your book supposed to be FedExed this morning? If you've had it in your bag the entire time, I will literally kill you for letting me rant like a maniac.”

Ronnie crosses her hands together and raises an eyebrow.

“Beeeatch,” I say. “You do have it.”

She reaches into her bag and passes a glossy mock-up of the cover across the table. There's a picture of what looks like a college campus in the background with a large brick wall in the foreground, and the words “F: THE ACADEMY” written on it in spray-paint lettering. To one side, a woman's outline is silhouetted, and beneath the silhouette, in funky but similar lettering is “a novel by Veronica Williams.”

“I love it! They did a great job.”

“It's a bit literal, but I don't hate it.”

I gesture at the cover.

“Please. This is
fabulous.
Men and women alike would pick this up. And it looks fun and smart at the same time. What more could you possibly ask for?”

Ronnie looks at the cover again, and I can see that she's proud, that even she can't quite believe that the novel will be coming out, in hardback, in bookstores across America.

“You know it looks good. Don't even lie.”

She nods her head slowly. “I guess.”

“But enjoy your breakfast because you will
never
eat lunch in this town again.”

The men at the table next to us stand up and toss one rumpled dollar on the table before leaving. They're hungry jack types, Earl in fifteen years if he hadn't been cleaned up in L.A.

“Doris,” she says. Her eyes follow the men out. “You say that like it's a
bad
thing.”

 

Probably because I was such a colossal snob about the town at breakfast, the rest of my afternoon in Langsdale is nothing but Mayberry moments. The campus is blanketed in a thin film of snow, everyone drives politely and with respect for the traffic laws, and the Langsdale students, dressed exclusively in non-designer wear, driving strictly functional cars, are a true relief from the Paige Prentisses of my new world. I half expect to see Jimmy Stewart running down the streets yelling “Merry Christmas, Merry Christmas.”

That evening the Langsdale Lounge is scheduled to open, so in true Doris fashion I have brought a vintage black cocktail dress for the occasion. It's a piece that I inherited from a favorite great-aunt, worthy of Donna Reed's finest look-I-fixed-dinnerfor-the-boss-so-that-my-husband-gets-his-promotion episode. The top is fitted with three-quarter-length sleeves and quarter-size fabric buttons running down the front until they meet the skirt part of the dress, which flares out from the waist in a halo of loose fabric. I pair it with pearls and some lovely black pumps that I found at Steve Madden, nouveau vintage for the nouveau vintage theater.

One thing to which I became accustomed during my time with Zach was dressing for an occasion only to have him by my side in a rumpled Oxford and jeans. Tonight, though, he's surprised me again. He comes out wearing a shirt, tie, and deliberately mussed blazer that definitely did
not
come from the local Old Navy. He has a Chet Baker–West Coast Jazz feel, with pressed pants and dress loafers, hair combed back and face clean shaven.

“If you've owned this getup the whole time I've known you and you've only seen fit to wear it now, I am seriously going to murder you.”

Zach narrows his eyes and gives me his most wicked half smile. “I take it you approve.”

I smooth the lapels of his jacket into place. “I more than approve.”

He kisses me softly and says. “So you think it's going to be okay tonight?”

“I know it will, Zach. You did the best job ever. I'm so proud of you I don't even know what to do with myself.”

He moves his attention to my neck, running his tongue around the edge of my pearls.

“I can think of a thing or two.”

“Threat or promise?”

“A little of both. So you like the way the theater looks?”

“I love it.”

“And you like the movie I picked out for tonight.”

“I love it.”

“And the music we're going to play before the movie starts?”

“Love it.”

“Even if we can't yet serve alcohol?”

“That's why God invented flasks.”

“And the light fixtures. They're authentic from the 1940s.”

“Love them.”

He puts his arms on my shoulders and looks me directly in the eyes.