Love Begins in Winter (8 page)

 

Brian is something in the universe and I am something in the universe, and our real names are not sounds or marks on a page but bodies. We meet and then we recede.

We can never truly be one sea, though we are both water.

 

 

It is Sunday afternoon and Brian and I are driving out to Hampton Bays to see Alan. We've been together almost four years. I have been editing the journals of Dr. Felixson. They will be published the year after next by a man I think Dr. Felixson would have admired. I have my own practice now, but eventually I'd like to teach. I have had an article published on Dr. Felixson's methods in pediatric psychology in the
New England Journal of Medicine
. His first book,
The Silence After Childhood
, is being reissued next year by a publisher based in Berlin. Since my article was published, I have received thirty-four letters from doctors across the world.

Brian sometimes tells me anecdotes about when Dr. Felixson examined him as a child. I love these and write them down.

Brian and I have also decided to live together, but we're never getting married.

 

T
OYS

 

C
ONVERSATION WITH
F
OUR-YEAR-OLD
D
OROTHY

Driving through Riverhead, Brian asks me to unwrap a sandwich we picked up at Greenpoint Café for our trip. He watches me unfold the paper and reaches out to take a half. I slap his hand.

“No,” I say. “I want us to share the same half.”

Trivial secrets and unspoken pacts keep us going.

We're driving through East Quogue. The road has thinned to a gray strip that slips through a forest. I think of the forest as my childhood.

Brian touches the back of my neck. My concentration breaks like a wave against the shore.

“Remember the champagne glasses?” he says.

I think of the two delicate champagne flutes we left in the Adirondack Mountains a few weeks ago. Brian and I were hiking. There are forests so thick it's like perpetual night—or the subconscious, Brian remarked. The air is thin and crisp. At night, we fell asleep with wood smoke in our hair.

After hiking nine miles up into the white breath of a mountain, we were truly invisible to one world but in the palm of another. Brian heard a river. We followed the sound and then spotted a rock in the middle, large and flat enough for our bodies to sit on comfortably. It had been raining, but it's amazing how quickly the sun dries the earth after it has been washed.

Brian and I lay our bodies on the rock. I closed my eyes. The sound of water was deafening. Brian unwrapped a bottle of champagne and two wineglasses from several T-shirts. I was surprised he would bring such things up into the woods. Then he explained. It was the anniversary of our first date. I told him it wasn't but that I'd help him drink the champagne to lighten his load.

We lay on our backs. The sun in and out of clouds. The silence of the sky intimidating. A landscape of thought.

Then Brian laughed and told me I was right. It wasn't our anniversary. I felt then he was somehow disappointed and so told him that every moment with him is a small anniversary. I don't know what it meant. It just came to me.

We kissed, and that led to us making love. It was sweet and slow. My foot trailed in the water like a rudder.

After, Brian pulled a towel from his rucksack and put it under our heads.

When I awoke, Brian was gazing down off the side of the rock into a deep pool. His bare back was a field of bronze muscle. I had forgotten his male strength. It was late afternoon. The sky had bruised. There was a wind and the trees shook. Wind is the strangest thing. The word describes a phenomenon.

I reached for Brian. I lay my palm on his back. He pointed to the pool beneath the rock. The scent of pine was overwhelming.

While I was sleeping, the champagne glasses had rolled off the bags and fallen into the rock pool below. By some miracle they had fallen upright. The river gushed through the rocks and then into the pool where the glasses stood. Each glass held the weight of an entire river without knowing where it came from and how much was left.

Suddenly, in the car just a few miles from Alan's house in Hampton Bays, I reach for Brian's arm. I dip my head and bite into it. I feel my teeth clamp his warm flesh. He shouts, then screams when I won't let go. The car runs off the road into the woods. There is thumping from underneath. Brian yanks his arm back, still screaming. The front wheels come to rest in a tangle of leaves and branches. I can taste Brian's salty blood in my mouth.

Brian looks at me and then incredulously at his arm. It bears the perfect indentation of my mouth, but the line is blurred by shallow bleeding.

Brian's eyes are full and swirling.

We breathe heavily, as though inhaling one another. Then it starts to rain. Nothing but the sound of drops falling. The rear lights of passing cars break into blood-red bloom through the rain-spattered windshield.

My eyes like leaves, long and wet.

Alan has baked lasagna. He arranges the chairs so that we sit close, so that in the end, as light dims and the curtain falls on another small day, we won't lose sight of each other's eyes, even if everything in-between has been lost or fell away one cloudy afternoon to the sound of passing traffic.

O
NE BRIGHT
W
EDNESDAY MORNING
in Rome, a young American diplomat collapsed onto a bench at the edge of St. Peter's Square.

There, he began to sob.

An old room in his heart had opened because of something he'd seen.

Soon he was weeping so loudly that a young Polish priest parking a yellow Vespa felt inclined to do something. The priest silently placed himself on the bench next to the man.

A dog with gray whiskers limped past and then lay on its side in the shade. Men leaned on their brooms and talked in twos and threes. The priest reached his arm around the man and squeezed his shoulder dutifully. The young diplomat turned his body to the priest and wept into his cloth. The fabric carried a faint odor of wood smoke. An old woman in black nodded past, fingering her rosary and muttering something too quiet to hear.

By the time Max stopped crying, the priest had pictured the place where he was supposed to be. He imagined the empty seat at the table. The untouched glass of water. The heavy sagging curtains and the smell of polish. The meeting would be well under way. He considered the idea that he was always where he was supposed to be, even when he wasn't.

“You're okay now?” the priest asked. His Polish accent clipped at the English words like carefully held scissors.

“I'm so embarrassed,” Max said.

Then Max pointed to the row of statues standing along the edge of St. Peter's Square.

The priest looked up.

“Well, they're beautiful—oh, but look, there is a statue missing,” the priest exclaimed. “How extraordinary.”

The priest turned to Max.

“Why would a missing statue upset you, Signor Americano—you didn't steal it, did you?”

Max shook his head. “Something from my childhood.”

“I've always believed that the future is hung with keys that unlock our true feelings about some past event,” the priest said.

“Isn't everything something from childhood?” the priest continued. “A scribble that was never hung, an unkind word before bed, a forgotten birthday—”

“Yes, but it doesn't have to be so negative, Father,” Max interrupted. “There are moments of salvation too, aren't there?”

“If there aren't,” the priest said, “then God has wasted my life.”

The two men sat without talking as if they were old friends. The priest hummed a few notes from a Chopin nocturne and counted clouds.

Then a bird landed in the space where the divine being had once stood—where its eyes had once fallen upon the people who milled about the square, eating sandwiches, taking photographs, feeding babies, birds, and the occasional vagrant who wandered in quietly from the river.

The priest looked at Max and pointed up at the statues again. “They should all be missing,” he joked, but then wasn't sure if the man beside him understood what he meant.

Max blew his nose and brushed the hair from his face.

“Please forgive me,” Max said. “You're very kind, but really I'm fine now—
grazie mille
.”

The Polish man sitting next to him had entered the priesthood after volunteering as a children's counselor in the poorest area of Warsaw. He couldn't believe what he saw. He quickly climbed the ranks and was skilled at negotiating the bureaucracy that plagues all men of action. Through his close work with young, troubled children, the priest understood the reluctance of men to share their troubles.

“You can tell me anything,” the priest said. “I don't just pray—I give advice too.”

Max smiled.

“I simply want to know why a missing statue has reduced a young American businessman to tears,” the priest said.

The priest's hair was as yellow as hay. It naturally slanted to one side. He was handsome, and Max thought it a shame he would never marry.

“Just a long-ago story I once heard,” Max said.

“That sounds nice, and I like stories very much,” the priest said. “They help me understand myself better.”

The priest lit a cigarette and crossed his legs. Max stared at him.

“It's the only vice we're allowed,” the priest said, exhaling. “Would you like one?”

Max raised a hand to say no.

“Did the story happen here in the Eternal City?” asked the priest.

“Las Vegas.”

“Las Vegas?”

“Have you ever been to Las Vegas?” Max asked.

“No, I haven't, but I have seen it on a postcard.”

“Imagine a woman sitting on a wall outside a casino.”

“A woman?”

“Yes.”

“Okay,” the priest said, and closed his eyes. “I'm picturing it.”

“A woman sitting on a wall outside a casino. It is very hot. The air smells of beer and perfume. The woman's name is Molly. She married quite young.”

“A teenage bride?” the priest asked.

“Exactly—very young,” Max said. “Molly's parents came from Fayette County but settled in Knox County—that's in Texas. Her father drove school buses, and her mother didn't work. Molly went to Knox County High. The school mascot was a bear. Some of the football players had tattoos of bear claws on their arms. There was a lake near the town. It was very popular with teenagers who liked to sit in trucks overlooking the water.

“From the postcard you've seen of Las Vegas, Father, imagine the ghostly band of neon which hangs above the city, changing the color of all the faces within its reach. The bright, flashing lights that promise children everything but deliver nothing.

“You can see Las Vegas from a distance: Look for the clump of risen metal on the horizon. If you approach at night, lights will beckon you from the black desert like a claw hand in a neon glove.

“Molly's first husband was run over and killed not long after the wedding. Then she met a high school football coach who was married.

“Molly and the coach met intimately once or twice a week for several years. When Molly found herself pregnant, the high school football coach pretended they'd never met.

“Molly's son didn't even cry when he was born in 1985. Molly thought he had an old soul. And for the first four years she raised him all by herself.”

The priest smiled and lit another cigarette to show his commitment.

Max went on:

“So Molly was sitting on the wall outside the casino, and she was crying but so quietly that nobody could see—not even her four-year-old son who paced in small circles, following his own shadow. Every so often Molly reached out for him but did not touch any part of his body.

“The trip to Las Vegas was Jed's idea. Molly and Jed had been seeing each other seriously for three months. Jed managed a furniture warehouse. Jed insisted that Molly's boy call him ‘Dad.' When the boy saw Jed's truck pull up in the yard, he would run into his mother's bedroom. Under her bed there was a pile of small plastic animals. But it wasn't the best place to wait until Jed left. To the little boy, it sounded like they were taking it in turns to die.”

“We're just waiting for your father,” Molly said. “He'll be here any minute.”

She had been saying it for hours. There was nothing else to say. The first time she said it, her son replied:

“He's not my father.”

“Well, he wants to be if you'll let him,” his mother snapped.

The sounds of the casino spilled onto the sidewalk. The hollow metal rush of coins played through speakers. Drunk gamblers looked at their hands as ghost coins rushed between their fingers. Their lives would change if only they could hit the jackpot. Those who had loved them in the past would love them again. Every wrong could be righted. A man could straighten out his affairs if he had money—if he had beaten the odds. He could afford to be generous.

A waiter rushed past Molly and her son with a platter of delicious fruit. Then a thin couple in sunglasses holding hands. Then an old woman staggered into the road and was yelled at by a man on a motorcycle who swerved around her. Three men in suits carefully dragged a man with a ripped shirt onto the sidewalk. His feet trailed under him like two limp oars.

“Don't ever come back or you'll be arrested,” one of the suited men said.

“Okay,” the man said quietly, then picked up the coins that had fallen from his pocket. The little boy helped him. The man said, “Thanks, boy.”

There was quiet for a while, and then the boy started to cry. He sat on the ground. He was wearing shorts and his legs were red from the sun. His socks had caterpillars on them. One had rolled into his shoe because they had walked so much.

By 3
AM
, the boy and his mother were invisible to the gangs of drunk insurance salesmen, dentists from Orange County, gentlemen gamblers from small towns in Kentucky, and women going to or coming from their work in the casinos and topless bars.

The little boy's throat was so dry he licked the tears from his cheeks. At some point during the early morning, he took a sticker from his pocket and set it on the ground with the glossy cards of naked women that litter the sidewalks of Las Vegas.

A limousine stopped at a light. It was a wedding. The women inside were smoking and singing along to country music. The bride was young. She looked at Molly and screamed.

The boy removed his sandals and set them next to his mother's shoes, which had been shed long ago.

Molly's pocketbook with all her money was in Jed's truck.

“I'll keep control of the money,” Jed had said.

The drive from Texas took four days. The boy kept throwing up because Jed smoked with the windows up and the air-conditioning on.

At night they all slept in the back on a mattress. The nights were cool. The sky glowed purple at dawn—then gold poured across the sky as the day was forged.

Molly's son was too afraid to ask his mother for the restroom. The thought of entering the casino made him feel nauseated. An hour or so later his underpants had mostly dried and the stinging upon the skin of his legs had given way to a slight tingling.

Then somebody approached him.

A man stood and watched the boy for some time; then he went away.

Then the man returned with something in his hand.

The boy felt a cold dish pushed against his bare thigh.

Then he noticed a figure standing over him.

“
Mangia
,” the man said softly, and pointed to the white, creamy square of dessert in the dish.

The man was wearing black pants with a soft red sash for a belt. His shirt was heavy and long-sleeved, with black and white horizontal stripes.

“Tiramisu,” the man said earnestly. “From the Venetian Hotel and Casino, a few streets from here—I just got it for you.”

The boy squinted and turned to his mother. Molly eyed the stranger suspiciously through her swollen eyes.

“Don't worry, Mama,” the stranger said to Molly. He pointed to himself with both hands. “
Amico
—friend.”

Molly had pretty eyes. She had made many “friends” in her life that she would sooner forget.

“No thanks,” she replied in a voice loud enough for passersby to overhear. Her voice was cracked with thirst and fatigue.

“Mommy—can I eat this?” her son said, and dipped his finger in the cream. “I think it's good.”

Molly held the dish in her hand, inspected the contents, and then put the dish back on the wall. “Eat it and thank the man.”

The man sat on the wall a few yards from them and lit a thin cigar. It smelled very sweet. He began to whistle. When the boy had finished the dessert, he slid over to the stranger and set the bowl down gently.

“I really like it,” he said.

“We call it tiramisu. It means ‘pick me up' in Italian.”

Then the man leaned down to the boy's ear. His breath smelled of cigars.

“There's liquor in it too.” He winked.

The boy peered down at the empty bowl. In its center were the colors of Las Vegas, held fast in a tiny pool of melted cream.

“Why do you speak like that?” the boy asked.

“My accent?” the man said.

The boy nodded despite never having heard the word “accent” before.

“I'm a gondolier—and the accent is from Italy.”

“A gon. . .”

“Gondolier,
sì
.”

“A goboleer?”

“
Sì
—do you know what that is?”

“Goddamn it!” his mother snapped without looking up. “Stop bothering the man.”

“But Mom, he's nice.”

“They're all nice at the beginning,” she said.

The man winked at the boy and then stood up. He took three small oranges from his pocket.

“They were all nice at the beginning, Mama—but could they all juggle at the beginning?” the man said.

The little boy watched the balls rise and fall. He sensed the weight of each orange in his own small hands.

“The magic is in how you catch each ball at the last minute, before it's lost,” the stranger explained.

“I want to try,” the boy said.

The gondolier stopped juggling and reached down.

Max held the oranges in his hands and looked at them.

“They're too big for me.”

“Ah!” the gondolier exclaimed, and from his pocket appeared three kumquats.

Molly laughed.

“Kumquats are the way to every woman's heart, my little friend.”

The boy looked at his mother again. He wanted her to be happy. They were on vacation.

“We're waiting for my fiancé,” Molly said. “He's just finishing up.”

The little boy set the kumquats next to his shoes and said quietly to the gondolier:

“He's lost all our money, mister.”

“He'll win it back,” Molly said.

The gondolier sat with them and lit another cigar.

“Smoking is bad for you,” the boy said.

The gondolier shrugged. “Did my grandmother tell you to say that?”