The Rest of Us: A Novel (22 page)

“Perhaps Lyuba fabricated that story or it was something that had been told to her. We’ll know for sure when the letters are translated,” he said. He put his hand around my wrist, lightly exploring the bones with his fingers. We sat listening to the hollow sound of the water lapping against the pay boats, the rustling leaves, the scraping of chairs. Distant music. I was mesmerized by the feel of his fingers, until he took his hand away and signaled to the waiter for the check. “Let’s go back to bed,” he told me.

•  •  •

We stayed in that bed for three days, leaving it only briefly to find food or a shower. Every time it was me that left, Rhinehart would wish me a “speedy return.”

On the second day, even if he was still supposedly in Ukraine, Rhinehart’s cell phone began to ring. He silenced it. It rang again. He handed it to me, asking me to shut it off. “Here is where I need to be until we decide otherwise.”

From the angle of the bed I saw part of a red building, one window with an air-conditioning unit, and a very small piece of sky, through which, sometimes, a cloud would move. This was “my view.” On the other side of the bed, he had his, and we lay back to back and described what we saw. Leaning over the sill, I spoke about the people below, heading in the direction of the park, who they were and where they were going and how they were feeling that day.

Time became a liquid thing, and sleeping and waking and lovemaking less distinguishable, and I thought of those long couches in Ottoman-era homes, where people lounged and conversed and dozed. I knew afternoon by the pattern of sun on the headboard, the richness of its color. That triangle of light, the sheet grazing my bare back, Rhinehart looking at me, as if his entire self was concentrated into the pinprick of his gaze. Light fell across my toes. His eyes half-shut, he said, “There is lovemaking that feels as if it’s doing tremendous good for everyone.”

•  •  •

We talked. We sat up in bed, eating Malaysian delivery out of cartons. I was reminiscing about my first years in my college town, how I used to walk everywhere, and in every other house someone I knew lived, and I could drop in to have coffee or pancakes or to smoke weed and play Yahtzee on a cold winter afternoon, and then walk home, a sheen on the snow like glass, the pale sun hiding behind the trees. That time now seemed irrecoverable to me, all its pleasures and gratifications bound up with my younger self—also gone. I
had loved that town, loved being a student, sitting in an overheated classroom or lying out on the lawn in front, gossiping, watching the guys playing hacky sack. I thought about teaching, once I had done enough shows to get hired at a university, but wondered if I would find standing in front of the classroom as pleasurable as sitting in the back, daydreaming about the night before.

“Do you ever miss teaching?” I asked Rhinehart. I was cross-legged, naked, facing him, clicking the chopsticks together, and looking out at a sand-colored building, the multiple black-rimmed rectangles of glass that constituted his view.

His gaze had wandered down between my legs but now he was eyeing me, trying to ascertain where I was going with this. “Sometimes. I enjoyed it, even when I was stomping around like a lunatic to try and engage them. Like Ezra Pound. You know it was capitalism that drove him mad.”

“I’m sure it had nothing to do with that cage in Italy he was locked up in.”

“He was a raving fascist before then. Hemingway claimed he was a stand-up fellow, if you trust Papa’s ability to judge character. He mostly liked people who flattered him. At any rate, I was always very conflicted about Pound. I found him difficult to teach, but at his best, he could be a brilliant poet.”

“That’s all you miss? The difficulty teaching Pound?”

“Not only. I miss the environment, too. Especially the end of the semester. I enjoyed seeing the library with so many bodies camped out in it. All that thinking and whispering and small movements and the sour smell of unwashed students sneaking bags of chips under their books. How they’d be sleeping across the chairs. Sometimes even under the tables.”

“I never really used the library.” I couldn’t remember where I studied, actually. It wasn’t in the dorm, with Hallie constantly bugging me and friends stopping in every two minutes.

“What a serious-looking girl you were. Not studious looking, exactly. Just serious. Serious about the world.”

“Do you remember the class I took of yours? The spring semester? That I was forced to audit.”

“Of course I do. You sat in the front row.”

“I wasn’t always up front. A lot of times I was in the back.”

“You changed seats midway through the semester to have a better view of anyone I might want to date.” Rhinehart was smiling. “Sometimes when I look at you, I see that young woman with something stuck in her hair from creeping around the yard, bursting into my study to accuse me of cheating.”

“With Natasha. Were you sleeping with her? I was never entirely convinced you told me the truth back then.”

“No, no—you invented that. I wasn’t interested in students. They were at a completely different stage of their lives, so sheltered and self-concerned. They didn’t even remind me of myself at that age. The kids I was similar to were the ones working in the dining hall. Especially one girl, who tried to dress up her uniform with hoop earrings and bracelets. It’s so hard to work for people your own age. She was always alone. Used to eat her free sandwich at a table by herself. I tried to slip her a couple of bucks but she wouldn’t take it. She was an honest girl.” He smiled. “Not that I wanted to date her.”

I didn’t know who Rhinehart was talking about. I didn’t remember anyone who worked at the dining hall. “But you were interested in me.”

“Who knows where you came from with your old-lady soul—an aberrancy. It’s remarkable that you and I had a relationship. If you remember, I resisted for a long time. I wasn’t comfortable with the idea of myself as one of those men.”

“You were even resistant to get involved recently,” I said.

“Until I received an ultimatum. I don’t think you’ve ever spoken to me like that before. I sort of liked it.”

“I’d had enough of the confusion.”

“I know and I’m sorry. But I would have come back to you anyway. I missed you so much in Ukraine. I was ready to take the risk.”

“So it wasn’t until Ukraine that you discovered you wanted a relationship with me?”

He smiled. “No, it was months before.”

“At Chechna’s, even? Or that night that I came for dinner, and you pushed me off you? You wanted one then?”

“I didn’t push you off—I was trying to slow things down. You were very quick to take offense. That night could have gone differently.”

I thought about this. “No. I could sense you were holding back. But why? If you knew you wanted to be with me?”

“Tatie, you think you’re the only one who has fear?”

•  •  •

Later that night, lying wrapped around each other like cats for warmth, I asked Rhinehart to talk to me about poetry. He was quiet for so long, I said, “Or your other writing. The essay you’re doing about the older workforce in Ukraine.” The topic had shifted slightly after he’d conducted a series of interviews during his trip.

“That type of writing is different from poetry. There are auxiliary materials to support you, you rev the engine, and you begin. Once you’ve started, you can always return to the material to read it over and get more ideas.”

“What is poetry like?”

He rolled away from me, onto his back, considering. “Otherworldly. A poem is a burst, an orgasm—unexpected and closed. It happens, you rework it or you don’t, and that’s it.”

I thought about photography and that indescribable spiritual feeling that came over me, tracking a vision that had the power to crack the world open like a nut, light streaming from its center. All these experiences, falling in love, making photographs, experiencing God, grouped together for me under the same heading, and were equally elusive, as if I would need an entire lifetime to hunt them down.

Outside my window the moon had moved to skulk over the top of the building. Rhinehart said, “I stopped writing well after the Pulitzer. I spent two years furiously composing, only to throw most of it away, then more time sitting blankly, looking at the wall, wondering
what the point of anything was. That feeling grew into a creeping fear that grew into aversion.”

“Did Laura know how you felt?” I asked carefully.

He paused. “Some. We didn’t talk about things like that. She had her gallery and her foundations and I had my work with the NEA, and we were constantly socializing. Poets need solitude and self-governance and downtime to think. At first I didn’t have it, and then I didn’t want it. The network of friends and parties started to feel more rewarding than struggling alone, staring into a gaping cave.”

I’d never heard him talk this way about poetry, and felt myself resisting the deflated voice he was using. “Did it even bother you that much back then? If it was so gradual, and you were socializing so much? Did you think you’d pick it up again later when you had more time?”

“No. And it wasn’t gradual. The day I stopped writing was a Wednesday. I was lying on the study couch at the house in Great Neck, waiting for inspiration. At the end of the day, it came down to this, this waiting, except this time there was nothing there. Nothing. No energy even. It was the feeling you have when someone you love has left, and you know they won’t return. I had that feeling, so I stopped. Stopping something is much easier than anyone thinks. It’s the struggle before you give it up that’s difficult.” He rolled over to me again and was tracing the line of my hip where it met the crease of my leg. “The funny thing is that writing always came easy for me, almost too easy. Especially that time when we were together, the words raced forth, so fast and uncontrolled—it felt as if I were constantly saddling steeds.”

“And now? Are you writing anything?”

“Scratchings, scribblings, but nothing of substance. No.”

I wanted to convince him that it would come back, but what did I know? At thirty-five, he had already published three books and was known internationally. Twenty years from now, colleges would still be teaching his poems—there would be dissertations written on him, biographies. Odds were I would never be half as successful. But I still
had the illusion of youth and young dreams, strong ambitious visions I’d yet to realize. And I was shooting. The future, for me, seemed limitless.

He said, “It would take a cataclysmic event to bring it back. Or maybe poetry’s return would be the cataclysmic event. What I write, if I ever do again, will have no resemblance to what I’ve written before.” He smiled valiantly, either for my sake or to punctuate the optimism of his statement. “I hope it’s just rearranging itself in my subconscious somewhere. It feels that way, especially recently. It feels as if now would be the right time for its return.”

He began kissing me behind the ear, which sent shivers down my neck, and I made my body flat and pulled him on top of me, tangling my legs up in his, longing to have him inside of me, to transfer some of this youthful ambition that felt, at times, like such a burden.

On the morning of the third day, Rhinehart and I woke up together, and after we made love, we began talking about outside things, restaurants and films and my photo studio, and he was resting his hand on my face, and smiling at me in a kind but somewhat distracted way, and I knew the time had come for us to get up. Rhinehart left the bed first to take a shower. I lay there, watching the bathroom door, my entire body curved in his direction as if with some heliotropic need. When I finally stood, weak-legged, and began to dress, I was thinking about how illogical, supreme attachments could form from the eruption of such bliss. And how crazed the craving to return to that place could make you, if you weren’t careful.

I
n the quickly darkening evenings of late October, I would walk with my camera, hoping to capture something. If I got out early enough, I could see the light fade against the buildings. The street lamps came on at five o’clock. These were usually my hours alone, in between work and my evenings with Rhinehart, cooking dinner, or going to see a film down at the Angelika, or jazz farther uptown if one of his friends was playing. Turning the familiar corner of his block, I felt the old rush of pleasure, anticipating our night together.

He heard me come in, and called out, “How was it?” I said that this time of year made the city look orphaned.

He quoted Emerson. “Nature wears the colors of the spirit.”

“But I’m not feeling orphaned. I’m happy.” Although just then I had been thinking about my Brooklyn apartment. I’d only been back there a few times in the past month, mainly to pick up the mail or retrieve something, and I would need to go there tomorrow to look through my closet and see what I had for cocktail attire.

Laura had called me this morning—I hadn’t heard from her since delivering the prints, which she had pronounced “magnificent.” She was inviting me to a feminist art event being held at MoMA. The Guerrilla Girls were speaking. “It’s more of a monthly networking thing for artists and curators, but newcomers are welcome as long as they have something to bring to the table. Imagine Naomi Wolf throwing a party, and you’ll get the picture. It’ll be good for you. Your generation is so decentralized. And I can introduce you to some
curators. Those photographs of yours need a wider audience than I can give them in my foyer.” I didn’t even hesitate before saying I would be there.

Rhinehart was in the living room. He had set up a folding card table with scarred legs, the one he’d used when learning how to play bridge for an article he’d been writing. I sat down on the stool next to it. “Why’s this out?”

He was rifling through a stack of pictures from the trip, a mixture of ones I had and hadn’t seen. There were close-ups of Lazar, who I’d originally envisioned as an awkward-looking teenager, someone out of a comic strip, with jug ears, acne, and a flop of black hair over his face. But he was actually a good-looking young man with thin, defined features and dark intelligent brows. His lips were parted, as if Rhinehart had caught him in the middle of speech. “Do you have another picture? One that’s clearer? What’s this black spot?”