Solos (11 page)

As the days grew shorter and colder, she began to wish she had a nice warm boyfriend to share the mattress with her and Harry.

It always surprised people who knew Emily that she had trouble with men. When she was younger, she had assumed maybe it was her big feet or her funny-looking ears that were the problem, but she had begun to suspect maybe it was something about her attitude.

“I think he got discouraged,” Gene Rae told her when her last boyfriend, a law student named Peter with melting brown eyes and a dog named Louie, broke up with her. “He told Kurt that sometimes you seemed to forget his existence.”

“I really liked Peter,” Emily said mournfully. “Of course I forgot his existence sometimes! But just on a situational basis, like when I was in the darkroom or reading. In a
cosmic
way, I loved him.”

“I'm not sure that was clear to Peter.”

“And anyway, I thought women were supposed to play hard to get.”

“Is that what you were doing?”

“No—I was just being normal! But if he
thought
I was neglecting him, why didn't he see that as a challenge?”

“Maybe he did,” Gene Rae said. “At first. But nothing changed, and so he got discouraged.”

Emily sensed behind these comments a long heart-to-heart with Peter, and sighed to disguise the fact that she resented this. “Well then, I'm glad he's gone, Gene Rae. He could have tried harder.”

“Emily! He did try harder! But you didn't try at all.”

“But I didn't know anything was wrong!”

She called Peter and explained to him that if he had had a problem with her attention span or her reading habits or something, he should have let her know instead of writing her a stuffy letter saying, “I have needs that are not being met, and so frankly, although I really respect and admire you, I just don't see a future for us.” On the phone he told her that maybe she was right, he could have handled it better, but it was a pointless discussion anyway because, actually, he had found someone else.

“Does she meet your needs?”

“She adores me.”

“Peter, I adored you!” Emily wailed.

“Oh, Emily,” he sighed. “No you didn't, sweetie. You really didn't.”

Emily had no idea what it all meant. She had had a boyfriend with beautiful brown eyes who made her laugh and was fun in bed and whose dog got along with her dog, and then suddenly she had an ex-boyfriend who respected and admired her.

“You probably need to meet someone as self-sufficient as you are,” Gene Rae said.

“Do you really mean self-absorbed?” Emily asked.

“No, that's not it. You're not self-absorbed at all, you're the opposite. You're more interested in other people than anyone I've ever met. You just don't really focus—you know? And the things that do absorb you … well, it's hard to define exactly what I mean. You're—” Gene Rae gestured helplessly. “You're just—”

Emily found she was on the verge of tears. “I sense the word
oblivious
struggling to come out.” She struggled to keep in control. “Or
clueless
. Some word like that.”

“That's not
quite
it,” Gene Rae sat for another minute, lost in thought. Then she said, “But it's close, baby. You know I love you to death, but—it's pretty close.”

Emily resolved to be less clueless, to focus better on her next boyfriend.
Focus
… meaning what? She had a general idea, but when it came to particulars she drew a blank.

Christmas in Williamsburg would be quiet and solitary; most of the people she knew were going out of town. It would be just her and Harry and Izzy making their own holiday cheer in the loft, phone calls to Mom and Milo and Laurie on Christmas day, a quart of eggnog with some rum in it.

In preparation, she arranged twinkly lights around the windows. She bought a four-foot blue spruce from a young couple who came all the way from Vermont to set up outside the subway entrance on North Seventh Street. She decorated the tree with strings of popcorn, paper cutouts, and, on top, a star she made from cardboard, gold paint, and the spangles from a broken bracelet she'd never been able to fix. To her mother and siblings she sent photographs of the Manhattan skyline at three different times of day. She gave Gene Rae and Kurt a picture of their dog that she took secretly and put into a homemade frame. She made cranberry bread for Anstice to find on her return, and painted a little picture of Harry with Izzy sitting on his head (not a real-life situation) for Luther. She baked dozens of Christmas cookies to take around to people in the neighborhood, like Gaby and Hattie and Marta and Mrs. Buzik and the guys in the pigeon-feed store.

On the late afternoon of Christmas Eve, as she was coming home from the deli, she ran into Joe Whack in the elevator. She was looking forward with pleasure to her dinner, which was going to be a simple and early one of rum-and-eggnog, along with slices of the fruitcake her mother had sent. The fruitcake was the good kind, dark and moist and mysterious, full of dried fruits and nuts but
sans
citron. Her mother made a dozen of them weeks ahead, doused them with booze, and left them to stew in their juices, then packed them up and mailed them to her far-flung children and relatives and friends. Emily had been eating this fruitcake as long as she could remember, but it was only recently that she had discovered the delights of washing it down with rum-laced eggnog. The combination, she thought, not only required no cooking but would console her for being alone on Christmas Eve.

Then in the elevator Joe Whack invited her to a party.

He was a painter, and that was nearly all she knew about him. Except that he was the only person in the building who didn't have at least one dog or cat. Anstice preferred to rent to what she called “animal people”; they were more honest, reliable, kind hearted, and generally lovable, she said. Joe Whack had a beagle named Bouncer when he moved in, then it turned out he had just borrowed Bouncer to get the loft. Anstice had no way of proving that or, indeed, of getting rid of him even if it was true. She had asked him to get at least one small cat, but he said he was allergic to cats, and he couldn't have a dog because he was living on the edge and he couldn't afford dog food.

He did seem, even to Emily, to be living on the edge.

His clothes weren't ragged, exactly, but they seemed old, cruddy, and few. He had a scraggly beard to match his patchy reddish hair. It was said that he painted compulsively, and his loft was stacked with canvases, but either he never tried to show his work or no one would take it on. Anstice had seen some of his paintings and said they were weird, monochrome still-lifes of oddly assorted objects. The one Anstice remembered depicted the edge of a frayed carpet with a crumpled candy wrapper and a milk bottle. “He doesn't seem to get out much,” she said. Anstice didn't like Joe Whack, and would love it if he became a success and moved to Tribeca or SoHo. Emily had no opinion about him, except that, observing his emaciated frame and bad complexion, she wondered if he was entirely well. And she noticed that whenever he was in the elevator with her and Harry, he kept his distance, smiling nervously, as if Harry was a piranha. Otherwise he was wanly friendly. But today he was almost effusive.

“It'll just be a bunch of people from the neighborhood who are stuck in the city for the holidays,” he said. “You know—the rejects and weirdos and sociopaths.”

“Well sure, if you put it that way, I'd love to come,” Emily said. “I guess I'm a little lonely.”

“Well.” Joe Whack smiled uncomfortably. “Great. I mean—okay, then. Whatever.”

“What time? And what shall I bring?”

“Don't bring a thing. We're having a big spread, food and drink.” Joe looked momentarily disoriented, as if food and drink were outlandish foreign ideas. “I've got an old friend staying with me—just moved here from upstate. Maybe you've met him in the elevator? A tall guy with long hair? My friend Hart. Anyway, he's organizing the whole thing. We're expecting about twenty people, maybe. Or more. Or possibly less. Hard to say.”

“I see.”

“So plan to come around nine.” The elevator door opened, and he pointed down the hall. “Right down there. 4-B.”

Joe got off, giving her another awkward smile, and Emily ascended to the fifth floor thoughtfully. She had told two lies to a man she hardly knew: She wouldn't
love to go to the party
, she would
sort of like to go, maybe
. And she wasn't
a little lonely
, she was
very lonely
. She had spoken as if the party would somehow cancel out the loneliness, but in her heart she doubted that was the case.

In fact, it would probably reinforce it, as parties do.

She let herself into her own apartment, made herself an eggnog-and-rum, sliced a piece of fruitcake, and sat down with Harry and Izzy and a book. After a while, Hattie called to thank her for the cookies, and her brother Milo called, and Gene Rae called from Kurt's parents' place in Vermont. All this cheered her up so much that when nine o'clock finally rolled around, she put on her good black dress and her sparkly red earrings, and walked down the two flights to 4-B.

8

Was it a rat i saw?

(October–November 2002)

Lamont opened the Tragedy Club on Berry Street at the moment 1999 flipped over and became 2000. It was conceived originally as a place that would present what Lamont whimsically called
stand-up tragics
who would “make people cry, make them think, make them
feel
.” But early into the new century, Lamont realized there just weren't a lot of stand-up tragics in New York who could make people weep into their beer. The Tragedy Club evolved into a comfortable bar serving cheap drinks and snacks with, occasionally, a poet or storyteller sitting on a stool under the spotlight.

But the name stuck, and nearly two years later, it is a huge success. The place has become a curiosity that people from New Jersey and Germany and Japan include on their tour of the sights of Williamsburg, and it is packed every Saturday night.

The Trollope group meets there on the last Tuesday of each month, and they usually sit at a large table in back because, even midweek, the bar area is crowded. When Emily and Marcus get there, they see Elliot C. sitting at one end of the bar with a cigarette and a bottle of Bud in front of him. Although the night is chilly, he is wearing a short-sleeved black T-shirt that shows his bulging biceps. He doesn't look at Marcus, so Marcus doesn't have to say hello to him.

“Jeez,” Emily says as they make their way to the back. “Crowded.”

“I used to hate crowds,” Marcus says. “But I stopped when I realized you can't live here if you hate crowds.

“Yes, you could,” Emily says. “You could live here in a state of constant loathing.”

Marcus thinks of his father, who loathes everything no matter where he lives. He wonders if Emily is thinking of him, too; he knows, of course, that she is his father's ex-wife. He also knows about the Thai food because Saul Smith told him the whole story. What he doesn't know is why on earth someone like Emily married someone like Hart in the first place.
I think she was lonely
, Saul said.
Sick of being alone. And Hart's not a bad-looking guy
.

This wasn't enough for Marcus. He imagines an actual shotgun wedding, Hart and Emily at City Hall with Hart poking a gun in her ribs as she says the vows. Or did he slip some drug into her English Breakfast tea? He wishes he could ask her, but he won't. He believes their friendship would be over if she knew he was related to Tab Hartwell, even though when Emily mentions his father—which she doesn't do often—it's not with loathing and revulsion but with a sort of detached amusement. “My ex was a Trollope fan,” she said once at a meeting, and snorted. “Possibly the world's most uncivilized person, obsessed with possibly the world's most civilized novels.” Marcus wanted to hear more, but the group immediately got into a discussion of what exactly she meant by
civilized
(in regard to Trollope, not Hart), then lost itself in a consideration of the ways in which Trollope tried to reconcile the outward stability of Victorian life with its underlying violence and social chaos.

This month, the group is discussing
Dr. Wortle's School
, Trollope's fortieth novel, which he famously wrote in twenty-two days in 1879. “‘I do not know that the history of fiction affords another instance of a novel of real merit having been written in twenty-two days,'” Emily quotes a critic as saying.

“Not to mention a novel of real merit about bigamy,” says Gene Rae.

“Well, it's not really bigamy, it's suspected bigamy,” says Oliver.

“But isn't it interesting that Peacocke wants to stick with Ella even if it turns out she's a bigamist?” asks Gene Rae, and the discussion turns to the changes that were happening in Victorian society in the late 1870s.

The Trollope group, which Marcus joined over a year ago, still seems to him—Is he crazy? Can this be true of anything but animals?—to be
intrinsically good
. Individually, its members may be foolish, venal, thoughtless, angst-ridden, but when they're at the meeting, they are changed, all of them. And why? Because the books are greater than they are, and some of the greatness rubs off. Maybe it's like religion, Marcus thinks, religion the way it's supposed to be but hardly ever is. It brings the lot of them together, joined in a devotion to the novels that comes from deep in the heart, a place where Marcus has so often found it hard to dwell. He knows some people consider Trollope a lightweight—Saul, for example, refuses to join a group that reads about, as he puts it, fox-hunting and parsons. Saul belongs to a Kafka group in the Village. And it's true, Marcus admits, that Trollope doesn't exactly take an ax to the frozen sea inside.… Maybe he's more of a lamp-lighter than an axwielder, melting the ice a little, shedding a nice little glow.…