The Enthusiast (13 page)

Two hours later, when people had left, Richard and Agnes were upstairs and I was in the kitchen washing teacups and glasses. Richard's voice cut through the running water: “It was six fucking years ago.” A door slammed. “Seven years.”

I had acid stomach. I didn't need my missed years of college to know that this was supposed to be like Mom and Dad having a fight, but there was something else. When Richard and Agnes worked for hours in the garden, or brewed tea like they were sending up the space shuttle, the end product was supposed to be a kind of equilibrium, and if they could have it, then others could too, but where was it now?

I almost slipped out before Richard got downstairs, but I had to rinse my hands. He said, “Henry, hey. Are you cleaning up? You don't have to clean up.” He gestured upstairs, shook his head, and said, “It's fine.”

I followed him into the living room and we sat down. “Is this weird for you?” he said.

“Is what weird?”

“All these people in and out of here. I realized, I haven't thought about it from your point of view.” He picked up a glass I hadn't gotten to, examined the half-inch of amber liquid in it, and put it down. “Or just the way we do things here. That could easily be weird.”

I reminded him about the other places I'd worked. “So, really, no place is weird for you,” he said.

“I was going to say everyplace is.”

He thought about that and said, “See you Monday?”

“Sure,” I said.

The next morning I got up early, made a thermos of Genmaicha, and drove to Poughkeepsie. At Color Tile I bought caulk, Caulk-Be-Gone, mildew remover, a putty knife, a breathing mask, a spreader, and an instruction book. At Sherwin-Williams I got white paint, blue tape, turpentine, brushes, scrapers, stirrers, rollers, a pan, and a hat. At the Goodwill store I got rid of the books from the bookcase and bought a wooden plant stand like the one in Richard and Agnes's living room. Theirs had a ceramic urn on it, sitting on a piece of fringed fabric. I bought a blue pillowcase and a green glass canning jar.

On Sunday I put Caulk-Be-Gone on the nine ugly layers that worthless Herbert had applied in the golden days before Janice's restraining order. I let it soak for hours while I scraped paint off the walls, but the caulk wouldn't be gone. I bent under the slanting shower wall, hacking at it with the putty knife, and stuck myself twice. At 7:00
P.M.
I got the last of it out, applied the mildew remover, spilled some of it where I'd stuck myself, screamed, washed it, went out for sandwich ingredients, and barked at the grocery cashier. When I put the new caulk on, my hands were shaking and my back was lit up with pain. My one layer looked worse than all of Herbert's and there was no reason to think it would leak any less. All I wanted was a shower, but I couldn't take one till the caulk dried at 4:00
A.M.
I lay down for a minute and passed out till morning. When I got to work, Richard and Agnes were on the deck drinking Dragonwell and laughing.

 

O
ne hot Saturday I washed my sheets in the bathroom sink and hung them on the clothesline in Janice's backyard. I started to go back upstairs but then turned around to stare at them. It was their least dingy moment of the week, but that wasn't what stopped me. They were a movie screen for the sunlight, pregnant with rest, making a sine wave out of the breeze from the river. By the time I stopped looking they were halfway dry.

 

I
was making Rice-A-Roni on the hot plate one evening when Janice knocked on the door. “I was just curious to see what you've done up here,” she said. “If it's a good time.”

I said yes. She came in and shielded her eyes as though there were glare coming through the window, which was strange because the sun was on the other side of the sky. “That's bright,” she said. “Do you mind if I close this?” She pulled the curtains, looked around, and said, “Wow, you've done a lot.”

A car pulled up outside and its door slammed. Then there was pounding on Janice's front door and a guy's voice yelling, “Janice! Hey! Janice!”

“The white paint looks so much cleaner,” she said.

“Open the fucking door, Janice!”

The pounding stopped, replaced by footsteps coming our way. She said, “Could I use your bathroom?”

“Uh, yeah,” I said. “What should I—”

She grabbed my hand, looked me in the eye with apology and panic for a third of a second, went into the bathroom, and closed the door just as the footsteps reached the top of the stairs.

I opened the door. The guy was tall, in jeans and a green
canvas shirt. I said, “Hello?” trying to sound like I thought he was selling something.

“Is Janice here?”

“No, I'm sorry,” I said. “This is the rental unit. I'm the tenant.” You steal electricity. You beat up women. I mean, I once kind of
pushed
a woman a few times, and I've yelled, you know, but Jesus. And what's up with that shirt? Ranger McSquirrel? Folks, if we'll all be quiet for a minute, we can hear the mating cry of the Battering Throwback. It should sound like, ‘Janice, Janice, I'm so sorry. Are you okay? I don't know what comes over me sometimes. I can't believe I would ever do something like that to you. I must have some crazy shit inside me.'
Crazy
is subjective, but
shit
I think we can all get together on.

“I can give her a message,” I said.

“No, that's okay. I'll try back.” You do that, Romeo. Try back sometime when I'm making Rice-A-Roni with the lights on and this whole illegal unit goes up like a Presto Log. He was turning to leave when there was a soft
clank
from the bathroom, Janice managing to bump into something.

He started toward it, but before I knew what I was doing I was blocking the doorway, meeting his eyes but trying to keep my expression plain. I wondered what my shoulder would feel like dislocated.

The weird thing was that I'd always been happy to quit my jobs at the first sign of conflict. The weirder thing was that, looking into Herbert's eyes, my second greatest desire was to talk to him, in a friendly way, about caulk. Yeah, I wanted to say, I tried putting some on there myself. It's the angle, isn't it? Getting yourself in there; and you're tall, so it must have been a real tiger cage. Wouldn't you think they could formulate it so you could control where it went, and how thick? If we can put a man on the moon, right?

I got my first greatest desire, which was him leaving. He slammed the door in my face and a few seconds later his car peeled out. After a minute Janice came out of the bathroom and said, “That's great what you did in there. The shower.”

“Thanks,” I said, and a special thank-you for leaving me out here with him and making that noise. Is that part of the arrangement as far as rent? Did you know that the Poughkeepsie Goodwill put half your books straight into the free box? The self-help and the Matt Helm novels? The Poughkeepsie Goodwill! It's a
punch line
, Janice. By the way, how were those self-help books? Any luck with that? On the road to a new life? Out of the shadows and into the self-assurance it takes to drag innocent bystanders into your domestic-disturbance theme park?

“I should pay for the materials,” she said.

“No, that's okay,” I said. It is, I thought. It's okay. I didn't mean what I was thinking before. I can see it, the yelling and hitting fifteen minutes before sex and then fifteen minutes after, the emergency room, Vicodin for your shoulder, Herbert stealing the Vicodin, a lawyer from a bus-bench ad, you getting the restraining order and then driving blind into traffic from the courthouse and the horns blowing, dumb
fucking
bitch.

“I should get back,” she said. “This is nice, with the jar.”

 

T
hat weekend, in the crowd at Richard and Agnes's, there was a woman in expensive casual clothes—linen pants, a sweater in two subtle yellows, a blue velvet jacket—and a complex feathered haircut. She was talking to a guy with a shaved head and big black glasses, and she looked so sane and healthy I almost didn't recognize her. I went over and said, “Hi, I'm Henry Bay.”

“Hi,” she said. “Wendy Probst.”

“I know,” I said. “We met once before.”

“Were you at the opening? I'm sorry, I get so—”

“No, it was a few years ago. I came to your house in Ohio. I was working for
Crochet Life
magazine. I came to take pictures of—”

“Oh my God. Yes.
Crochet Life
.” She said to the shaved-head guy, “I used to make these throws with, you know, unicorns and Raggedy Anns and—”

“Ironically?”

“No, no. That was my work then. No one believes me about this. I used to sell them at crafts fairs. It was wonderful. There were women who made little people out of Ivory Snow bottles.”

“That is wonderful.”

“And this magazine that he was from was like a ladies' craft thing, which as far as I'm concerned is still what I do. The whole point of using this medium is that it's a quote ladies' craft, so it carries that whole—”

“No, absolutely,” the guy said.

“People always put them on the wall,” she said, “and I say, you know, they're
throws
. You can put them on your couch and get under them when you watch TV. Anyway, and—I'm sorry…?”

“Henry.”

“And Henry came and took pictures of these unicorns and things, that's…”

“Actually, I think it was the first ones you had people in.”

“Oh. Yes. Oh, that poor lady, what was her…?”

“Cerise Lander?”

“Cerise. Yes. She was nice. So that was when I was just starting to show.”

I said, “To show?”

“In galleries. My first show was in Chicago. It must have been right around then.”

The shaved-head guy said, “Have you seen her show that's up in New York now? It's amazing. It's called
Throes,
with an
e
. It's a great name.”

“Do you think it's great?” Wendy said. “I don't know. They wanted…anyway.” She turned to me. “So what are you doing now?”

“I work for Richard and Agnes. On their magazine.”

“Oh, that's terrific.” She smiled and lowered her voice. “I knew them before it was tea. I love it that they're these upstanding country people now.”

Some new people came in. Half of them already knew Wendy and the rest were excited to meet her.

I wasn't surprised she'd forgotten me. I was feeling like I'd blundered in with a race of people who actually had something to offer, and sooner or later they'd wonder what I was doing there. As I edged to the back of the circle around her, Agnes came in and said, “Wendy!” They hugged, and then Agnes saw me and said, “Did you meet Henry?”

“Oh, Henry and I go way back,” Wendy said. “Remind me to tell you. It's funny.”

 

O
n Monday Richard asked me if I wanted to go to New York the next day. A tea importer named Randolph had bought an ad at the last minute and someone had to show him the layout, take a picture of his showroom, and bring it back that night to get it into the issue. “It's down on West Broadway,” Agnes said.

“Okay,” I said. I paused. “I haven't been there before. To New York.”

“Wow,” Agnes said.

“That's great,” Richard said. “You should take the whole day. Go through Times Square. See a museum. Dance with a lamppost like Gene Kelly. Henry steps out.”

Agnes called Randolph and made the appointment for 4:15 the next day. I went home at lunch, found Gerald's card, and left him a message. Two hours later, on the porch, Agnes answered the phone and handed it to me. Gerald said, “
Hey
, baby! Did that woman say, ‘Cozy'?”

“Yeah,” I said. “That's where I work. How are you?”

“
Cozy
! I would never leave the premises. But you are. You're coming tomorrow. I'm wall to wall tomorrow. I'm broadloom. I'm plump fat polyester. I tell you what, though. Take coffee with me.” He did his Russian voice. “Palm Court of Plaza Hotel. Special hotel, Henry! Famous! Everyone love this! You can come to there at three ten?” I said yes.

In the morning I rushed to the train without making tea, and by the time I got to the station an invisible C clamp was squeezing my head like a melon. The Grab 'n' Go next to the station had supermarket teabags and hot water. I bought a cup and drank it on the platform, tasting sweepings from the tea-withering room—the sponsoring beverage of all-day bathrobes and cracked-linoleum kitchens—but with the first sip my jaw unclenched and my eye stopped jumping.

I hadn't realized how serious my habit was. I got on the train picturing the Manhattan of a made-for-cable movie, with the camera panning from a sidewalk full of hurrying extras to a doorway where I crouched sucking on a bag of Red Rose, its tag hanging from my mouth like a small animal's tail. I had a week's beard and a filthy overcoat that had gotten too big for me. A man in a spotless suit walked two steps past me, stopped, and turned around. We'd been business executives together. “Henry?” he said. “Henry Bay? Oh my God.”

I sat on the west side of the train and stared out at the wide green river, sculls and sailboats, erector-set bridges, and trees massed on the high bank of the opposite shore. After an hour the river narrowed, the trees gave way to smokestacks and storage yards, and I saw a few long streets of brick and traffic before a tunnel swallowed us up.

The platform at Grand Central was gritty and stifling, but a few yards away was a marble concourse, cool and strangely clean for the foot traffic it was handling. Every beam on the ceiling was edged in cream filigree, every light bulb set in an inverted bowl of plaster foliage. Any one of those bowls could have been glass-cased in a Clayton museum, but there were hundreds here, dropping soft light on the food stalls and two-hundred-title newsstands while the conversations of hundreds of people, baffled by the high ceilings, made the sound of the continental switchboard in an old movie montage, and all this was before I even got upstairs.