I'm Not Your Other Half (11 page)

“Not that much, really. I have your father.”

I tried to think of Michael like that. I have Michael. So I don't need anything else. I don't need to sing in Madrigals, I don't need to take walks alone in the country, I don't need to browse in libraries, I don't need Annie.

I stared at my mother. She didn't notice. I turned and watched her in the mirrors instead, and this time she was aware of my gaze and twinkled her fingers at me. Dozens of me twinkled back. “Some of those are pretty messy,” she said, handing me Windex and paper towels. “I can't imagine why I thought mirrors were a perfect decoration for a wall close to the stove. Oh, well.”

I polished mirrors.

The phone rang. “It's Michael,” called my father.

I took the call in the front hallway, instead of up in my bedroom the way I always do, for privacy. My father looked at me strangely, but he walked away carefully, closing the doors to give me privacy anyhow. “Hi, Michael,” I said.

“Hi. Listen. Don't you want to change your mind about the hockey game? Price's father got fantastic seats. Right near the front.”

How could I explain to him enough times that right near the front was the last place I would want to be if I went to a hockey game, which I didn't want to do? “No, thanks.”

He sighed. “Okay.”

Silence. A pain sharper than cramps shot through me, and my throat got hot and tight.
I love you, Michael.
“Couldn't you let Price have both our tickets,” I said, “and we'll do something else?”

“Fraser, when do I ever get to go to a pro hockey game? With seats like this? I don't want to do anything else.”

“I do.”

“Yes, you've made your point very clearly. Okay. I'll see you next week then. You can research Eliza, since you get such a thrill out of being alone in a library.” He hung up.

Michael, whose patience was what first attracted me to him! Whose sweetness with Katurah was so nice to see! Michael, exasperated beyond belief with me! I could imagine him, the way his eyes would be closing. The way his large smooth hand would tug at his hair, pulling it back as if he could pull the frown off his forehead. How his eyes would open very slowly, so that for him the room must materialize by degrees, and he'd take a long deep breath, his wide chest spreading wider, pulling the cables of his gray sweater taut, and then relaxing.

Oh, Michael!

I kept on Windexing mirrors, and polishing them far more carefully than my mother's standards required, and it caught at me again—pain like a fishhook; fear like a tightening wire.

I want to have Michael. If these are the demands he makes, I have to go with it.

I called him back. “Michael? I'll go.”

The Coliseum stank of beer and sweat and popcorn. It was jammed with more men than women, all wearing dark, heavy clothes, all overly eager. All I could think of was Romans gathering at their Coliseum for their games; slaughters and blood and thumbs down for death. When the teams skated out, the spectators bellowed things like “Get 'em, Billy!” and “Kill 'em, Nick!”

This is how I choose to spend my time? I thought. Kit is dying and I'm sitting here waiting to see these people attack one another?

“Now just relax, Fraser,” said Michael. He handed me a Coke, and it sat in my hand cold and heavy. “It's fun, really,” he told me. “It's just a game, like basketball. You love basketball. Make an effort and you'll love this too.”

I'll never like it, I thought. The game hasn't even started and I want to leave. I hate the whole audience. I hate myself for being here. I hate Annie for giggling and shouting. “Michael, I want to go home.” I said.

“We all came in Price's van,” Michael said. “You can hardly drive away. You know what? The first time we double-dated and picked up that log cabin, I figured Price was the one who was going to be the problem. But I was wrong. You are.”

“I'm taking a taxi to the bus stop,” I said, “and taking the bus back to Chapman.”

“You can't do that,” said Michael fiercely, and his fingers dug into my arm. “The bus stop is in the worst section of town. You shouldn't even get
out
of a taxi there, let alone wait for a bus. Now just shut up and cooperate, Fraser. We're here now, and if you didn't want to come you shouldn't have come.”

He was right. The bus station was out of the question. And so I sat, while the spectators around me screamed. It was the most involved audience I had ever come across. It made college football look like nursery school. People shrieked encouragement, and when they jumped up they stomped on their beer cans to flatten them. Michael yelled right along with them, and so did Price.

And so did Annie.

On the covers of the paperback romances Annie and I used to read there would be a blurb.
As David sweeps Cathy away
…
Read how Lance sweeps the resentful Mignonette into the oblivion of love
…

It really meant that. Annie had been swept away. You could not even tell now where she had stood. No footprints on the carpet pile, no scuff marks on the floor. Price had swept her away. Price was still there. But Annie was not.

“Miss Fraser MacKendrick, please,” said a thin metallic voice.

I could not imagine who was on the phone. It sounded very official. What applications had I made (or serious criminal errors!) that would lead to an official phone call? A total stranger always assumed that Fraser MacKendrick was a boy and addressed me as “Mr.” I said dubiously, “This is Fraser MacKendrick.”

“Hold the line for Lacy Buckley,” said the metallic voice, now sounding slightly rusty.

“Lacy Buckley!” I said.

Lacy ran the morning talk show. The national talk show carried most of the hour, but she did the local segments. I'd been on Lacy's show twice when I was kicking off Toybrary. Being on television was nothing like what I had expected, and being on Lacy's was more fun than any of the others, because she was actually interested. The rest were just killing time.

Lacy looked somewhat like my mother. She was my height, but stocky. She wore blouses to match her name—silk, festooned with miles of lace. She had an oddly shaped nose, a big mouth over a sagging chin; long, flat eyebrows, and hair skinned back into a tight bun skewered with pins and draped with ribbons.

All this, and yet she was a striking, altogether appealing woman. I was crazy about her.

She remembered me, I thought. How fantastic.

“Fraser?” said her familiar voice. Big and chunky, like a necklace nobody would ever really wear in public, her voice thrust itself into your living room and never left.

“Hello, Lacy,” I said joyously. “How are you?” She was one of the first adults I ever addressed by her first name. She had told me to, and it felt comfortable.

“Splendid, my dear. It's almost one year since you launched Toybrary. We want to schedule a first-anniversary interview. Be prepared with statistics about toy use. What toys are popular. How many you own now. What types. How many children are actually patrons of Toybrary. That sort of thing.”

I had kept plenty of statistics. More for something to do than for any future purpose. But the notebook that Annie and I kept in the desk drawer had all that. I'd just have to add it up. Make lists.

“I'll want you in here Thursday morning at eight-thirty. You don't have a conflicting class, do you?”

Of course I had a conflicting class. Thursday is a school day. Counting on my
she's a brain and this is good publicity
status, I said, “No problem. I'll be there at eight-thirty.”

“Splendid.” She left the phone without saying goodbye, and since it was my third time with her, I knew enough not to hang up myself. The metallic-voiced secretary would come on with instructions. “Miss MacKendrick? We'd advise wearing bright clothing, some eye makeup, but no more than you usually wear, and get here at quarter after eight rather than eight-thirty. Got it?”

“Got it.”

“Splendid,” said the voice in puny imitation of Lacy.

And it was. There's nothing like being sought after for television to make you feel good!

Michael drove me into the city to see Kit again.

He was very careful. He was careful driving in city traffic; he was careful to keep the radio tuned to my favorite station; and he was careful to discuss Kit, the whole Kit and nothing but Kit. No way was he going to have me accuse him of being unfeeling this time.

Of course, this time I wanted to talk about us, not Kit. What was there to say about her now, that we had not already said? A little girl still comatose—nearly a month now—no more signs of life than before—no improvements whatsoever. Two weeping parents, tears still coming from ducts that must be wearing thin from overuse.

I was not sure why I kept going in to see her. Because that's what it was, really. I saw her. I didn't speak to her, comfort her, or give her anything. Nor did she give me anything. I just walked in and looked at her for a while. Sometimes I felt like a spectator at the hockey game—waiting for my share of the action. Don't die while I'm here, Kit, I would think, watching the pitiful slight movement under the sheets that passed for breathing.

Michael wasn't on the list of allowed visitors. I stood alone in Kit's room, watching the liquid drop from the I.V. bottle and seep slowly into her veins. Her nose was filled with tubes, and her mouth was slack. The missing teeth had grown in. The teeth had kept right on growing, no matter that Kit wasn't around to be aware of it, and filled in the gaps. She looked strangely older lying there without her baby gaps. Please God let her play with Barbie Dolls again, I thought. Or let her be a scientist.

What are You up to, God? What's Your theory here?

But no answers came.

I went back to the ugly waiting room to get Michael. He was leafing through a seven-month-old
Time
Magazine. Across from him was Mrs. Lipton. She shocked me. Like Kit, she had aged. But unlike Kit, she looked like a hag. This is the mother of a newborn infant? I thought, remembering little Jonathan. She looks like a great-grandmother. “Hello, Mrs. Lipton,” I said.

“Oh, Fraser!” she cried. And I mean cried. Even a single syllable turned to tears for her.

And once again the same things poured out of her. Not so much about Kit, because she had said it all, but about the money. “We can't afford it, Fraser. We can't come again till next Saturday. I can't pay a baby-sitter any more, and I used up the last dollar in our savings account. I literally don't have another cent until Jack's payday next Friday.”

I'm not good at comforting people. I don't know what to say to them. I felt despicable having money when she didn't. But what could I do? Open my purse, hand her my ten dollars left from the florist and say, here, come tomorrow with this?

I opened my purse and gave her the ten dollars left from the florist and said, “Here. Come with this.”

“Oh, no, Fraser. Absolutely not. We can't go begging. If I had realized how you would react, I wouldn't have said these things. Now listen, honey, enough of my problems. You tell me about Toybrary. How's it going these days?” She managed a reasonable facsimile of a smile, so I gave her one in exchange, furtively tucking the ten dollars back in my bag. “It's great. I've almost talked two sophomore girls into taking it over for me, and next week I'm going to be on Lacy Buckley's show talking about what the first year has been like.”

“How exciting,” exclaimed Mrs. Lipton. “You've been on television before. I know, because Kit saw you one morning when she was home with the flu. What's it like?”

So I told her what it was like. The huge cameras, big as washing machines on movable pedestals, and the great cables lying on the floors. The peculiar fake two-sided room in the middle of an area as large as a school gym. How Lacy sat in a comfy rocking chair with a good back, and her guest sat on fat ploppy upholstered seats, where they sank in so deep they were trapped and couldn't escape any of Lacy's questions, ever.

“I feel so cheered talking to you, Fraser,” said Mrs. Lipton, and she looked cheered. I could even see a little of Kit in her; some of the verve. “Now you have a good time on that show and wear something green, like you have on today. Green is such a good color for you.” She stretched up to kiss my cheek and walked briskly down the hall to visit her daughter.

I was glad she was cheered. I myself felt drained. It was as if the act of cheering Mrs. Lipton had sucked the cheer out of me. I stood limply, thinking of nothing, just recuperating.

“You didn't tell me you were going to be on TV.”

I had forgotten Michael. I turned, jarred. “Oh,” I said.

“Yes.
Oh.
It's me. Michael Hollander. Remember? The guy who drove you here?”

“Don't let's fight.” I said tiredly, reaching for my jacket and walking toward the exit.

He caught up with me. “I wasn't fighting, Fraser. I was just mentioning that you didn't mention being on television to me. It's pretty important. I would have thought you'd tell me about it when we were driving in.”

I pressed the elevator button. It was very large, a translucent white, shaped like an obese arrow, for people who can't read UP or DOWN. I'm one, I thought. I'm so tired I need that arrow to be sure where I'm going.

You find the perfect man, I thought, but now you cease to be the perfect woman. You become a shaving off his stick. You eat his candy, play his games.
He sweeps you away.
If you're Lynn, you take up sailing. If you're Mom, you take up genealogy, surrender Needle N Thread. If you're Annie, you take up sports, surrender violin. If you're Judith you take up stamps, surrender owl prowls.

“Michael,” I said.

The elevator door opened. We got in. There was a technician leaning against the back, holding a tray full of vials of blood.