The Risk Pool (54 page)

I thought I did, but I said I didn’t.

“Bathe,” she said, surprising me. “I’d rather swelter than listen to filth. Close the windows,
I
say. Pray for winter. Then at least they have to close
their
windows.”

In fact, I was hearing noises, but they sounded like they were coming from the rear of the apartment. Another door slammed.

Mrs. Schwartz started to get up, then sat down again. “Actually, we’re having something of a domestic crisis of our own today,” she admitted.

I said I was sorry to hear it, that perhaps I shouldn’t have come, a possibility Claude’s mother appeared too abstracted to protest.

“It’s been suggested that there are other places where I might be content …” Mrs. Schwartz said, though it was clear that she considered this radical notion malicious nonsense, her own recent protestations of discontent notwithstanding. “As if the very bed she’s lying on in there were not my own. Given freely, you understand, I’m no Indian giver. After all, what do
I
need with a king-size?”

Claudine Schwartz appeared to give the question much consideration.

“You men,” she continued. “How I envy you. The way you can just pack a suitcase when things go wrong. Walk, as they say. Imagine.” She looked around the dark flat as if for an exit sign. “Do you know what my husband took with him when he abandoned us?”

I said I didn’t.

“Nothing,” she said. “Underwear. Socks. A few shirts. His shaving kit.”

That sounded a lot like my own hasty departure from Tucson, and it made me feel guilty, as if I’d left a girl there, one I hadn’t known about.

“Do you know what I took from our house on Third Avenue when we moved to this … this … place?” she said, and waited long enough for me to raise my eyebrows. “Everything. I took every living thing. Furniture. Dishes. All of it. Half is in storage. What I kept it all for I couldn’t tell you, I’m sure. But I have it, and I’ll keep it.”

She nodded, taking inventory of the room, her expression saddening. “We had such nice things, didn’t we? For the longest time I thought after a while he’d remember all our nice things and get lonesome for them. But I guess men don’t.”

“I doubt he’s very happy,” I said, trying to cheer her up. In fact, I’d occasionally thought of Claude Sr. and wondered what might have become of him. There were two or three scenarios I’d toyed with. In one he was a guilt-ridden, grief-stricken wanderer, tormented by recurring dreams from which he would scream awake. In another he’d changed his name, found himself a long stretch of warm beach, and forgotten all about his previous life. But the one I leaned toward had him managing a small factory in a nearby state, married again, his new wife cheerfully bearing him sons through wide, good-natured hips. Big, slow boys he’d engage in foot races until they were old enough to beat him, or until they despaired and withdrew into defeat.

I continued to think about him even after Claude’s mother got on to more pleasant topics, until we heard Claude’s hurried feet on the stair and he burst, out of breath, into the room with a huge, hot cardboard box. It was just what we needed. Steam.

* * *

Somehow, we got through it.

I was far too uncomfortable to be hungry, but I ate two slices anyway—no toppings, double cheese—each bite pulling long sheets of swaying mozzarella toward vulnerable chins. In the center of the table was a sweating pitcher of cherry Kool-Aid, which made me wonder whether the Claudes customarily drank Kool-Aid with their meals or if this was a special occasion, a nostalgic gesture designed to remind Claude and me of the good old days when we’d drunk pitchersful on the big redwood picnic table in the backyard of their old house. Maybe it was a matter of money. Claude couldn’t have been getting rich at the post office, and there were three mouths to feed. I tried to imagine Claude asking for a raise and couldn’t. Tried to imagine him being given one without asking, and couldn’t swing that either. The fact that they were all living together in a cheap flat suggested at least a degree of desperation. The more I thought about it, the more convinced I became that inviting me for even such modest hospitality had probably required a sacrifice, and I tried my best not to in any way reveal my most profound wish that they’d reconsidered the project and risked hurting my feelings. God, did we sweat over that pizza.

Claude’s wife did not appear until after dinner when I started making excuses about having to leave. Then Claude disappeared for a few minutes, and when he returned he had a young woman in tow. Given the circumstances, I was surprised by my reaction to Claude’s wife. If ever anybody deserved to be cut some slack, granted a fistful of allowances, Lisa Schwartz certainly did. Here she was, clearly in the advanced stages of pregnancy, stuck in a close, shabby, sweltering apartment, with her husband’s mother for company, and with a husband whose prospects for improving their situation were, realistically, slim. And yet, I took an instant and extraordinarily intense dislike to her. So powerfully negative was my first impression that I was at a loss to in any way account for it or even, I fear, to conceal it.

The young woman Claude had married was short, with dark hair and skin. Her center of gravity seemed actually
below
her sizable hips. Perhaps in deference to the heat, she was wearing a light jumper that was designed to be worn with a shirt underneath. She was not wearing one though, and the deep arm holes revealed the sides of her moist, swollen, purplish breasts, along with tufts of matted black hair. Every detail of her perfectly
dreadful appearance, it seemed to me, was a conscious and pointed indictment of the smiling husband at her side. I had all I could do to shake her hand when it was offered.

“Lisa,” I said, deciding on levity. “For some reason I half expected your name to be Claudia.”

“Why?” the girl said, her dark eyebrows joining when she frowned.

“I don’t know,” I said, regretting the attempt immediately.

“There any pizza left,” she asked her mother-in-law. “I don’t feel so shitty now.”

I did though, and when Claude walked with me down the narrow stairs and out into the street, I sat down on the porch steps, still tasting the cherry Kool-Aid. Claude joined me. The sun was down behind the houses now, but it was still light and would be for another hour. Some grubby kids were playing kickball up the block, kicking uphill so the ball would come back to them if it didn’t get stuck under curb-parked cars. It was still hot and muggy, but a tremendous relief from the deadness of the Schwartz flat. I ran my fingers through my hair and said, “Jesus, Claude,” before I could stop myself. Strangely, he didn’t seem to take the least offense, attributing my remark, perhaps, to the sweltering heat.

For the first time in a long while I felt rotten about not having any money. If I’d had a spare five hundred, I’d have written Claude a check right there, though I don’t know what good it would have done them. It was an unholy trinity they made and I doubted all the money in the world would have made much difference, but it would have been worthwhile to introduce an air conditioner into their flat, if only to dry the glistening perspiration from Lisa Schwartz’s purple breasts.

Clearly, though, I was more upset about my friend’s circumstances than Claude himself, who just grinned at me and said, “Life, huh?” as if his own was sufficiently awful to be wonderfully interesting. I think it was the first thing he’d said all evening, and it pretty much killed further discussion.

After shaking hands, I left him there on the steps and pulled my father’s convertible away from the curb slowly, did a U-turn and interrupted the game of kickball. I was in a hell of a mood and when one of the kids made a wise-ass remark as I crept up through their center field, I think, if I hadn’t caught a glimpse of Claude in the rear view, I’d have gotten out and taken great pleasure in
bloodying the little shit’s nose. Even when I was safely out of the horrible neighborhood, my murderous mood refused to dissipate, so I drove out of town to a spot where the old two-lane blacktop ran straight and true for several hundred yards. I stopped there for a second, listening to the chorus of insects brought to life by the setting sun and the stillness of the air. Then I hit the accelerator hard and felt a rush of air as the Cadillac strained forward. I kept my foot right on the floor, burning toward a dark spot on the horizon where the two lanes merged in a constant, ever receding fixed point, all speed, all focus, all illusion.

On the way back to town I had to pull over. The convertible had done what I asked, but it was thirsty now. It took three quarts of oil before anything registered on the dipstick.

By midsummer Tria Ward and I had become lovers.

Proximity was partly responsible. I visited the Ward house several nights a week to work on
The History of Mohawk County
, and to my surprise, Mrs. Ward left me alone in the den she’d set up as a shrine to her father. I told her I’d need a large table and a typewriter, and these appeared the next night, the recliner having been moved out to create space. There were limits to her trust, of course, and when I told Mrs. Ward that I’d need to make a copy of the manuscript, she insisted on doing that herself, fussing terribly about the necessity of laying the individual pages flat on the surface of the photocopy machine. She feared cracking the pristine leather binding. She got over it, though, and was very pleased to discover that I no longer needed to consult the original typescript. This she returned to its hallowed place on the mantel, where it stayed for about a week, and where her nervous glance would locate it as soon as she entered the room, as if she expected it to speak to her in her father’s recollected tones. Then one day
the book was gone and Mrs. Ward explained that she’d begun to be concerned for its safety in the event of fire or burglary and had placed it in a safety deposit box in the bank. That burglary was a seriously considered scenario should have alerted me to the dangerous fantasies that Tria’s mother was indulging concerning her father’s tome, but I didn’t and wouldn’t for another six weeks, and by then it would be too late.

More embarrassing to relate is the fact that I myself began to indulge a fantasy or two concerning
The History of Mohawk County
. Originally, I had intended to follow Tria’s advice by reading the manuscript, telling Tria’s mother that I thought it quite wonderful, but that local histories had seldom generated any interest outside their locales, and that in any case, I knew nothing about how she should go about getting it published. I’d be happy to write a letter on her behalf to a local or university press, but beyond that.…

This was the plan, and I no doubt should have stuck to it. But when I began to study the manuscript, I could not help but engage in the theoretical problem posed by its condition. The book was as dry and lifeless as only the worst history can be, but its most pressing problems were stylistic. The writing, though mechanically sound, was stiff, awkward, dull, repetitious, obscure. There were other problems too; the book was not truly history, at least in the best sense, because it arrived at no conclusions and lacked unity of vision. It was nothing more than a compilation of disparate facts. Here’s how the Iroquois stitched their moccasins. At the very least, the book needed a long introductory or concluding essay to tie together the myriad threads the author had not seen fit to weave, and to suggest what possible significance such information might have.

But it seemed to me that
The History of Mohawk County
might be rendered readable, perhaps even marginally interesting. And I thought it might be fun to try. Working in the Ward library, so small and dark and cool, reminded me of my wonderful mornings in the Mohawk Free Library during the two years I’d lived with my father. There I had read helter-skelter, allowing the wide world to open up to me at random. The sense of wonder I felt there had been all but stifled by my subsequent education, and the huge, well-lit stacks, adjacent to sterile, modern university reading rooms had proven a poor substitute for my crooked little alcove in the town library. And too, after listening all day to the
assorted bullshitters and outright liars who frequented Mike’s Place, I was ready for an evening of quiet, cerebral pursuit, if only I could convince myself of the worthiness of the project.

At first, Tria was all for sticking to our original plan. She was pretty sure I had no legitimate business futzing around with her grandfather’s manuscript. But when I asked her to give me a week she reluctantly agreed, and I went to work in earnest. Each night I carefully reread about ten pages of typescript, then went back and edited five of them on the theory that I’d always be far enough ahead to catch significant repetitions of style and substance and be able to reorganize details where needed. Then I retyped the edited pages and made further cosmetic revisions. I was at best a mediocre typist though, and that slowed my progress, until Tria, who typed like the wind, volunteered to do the edited text while I worked in pencil on the copy of the typescript.

We were a strange pair. Most evenings she’d join me about forty-five minutes into my labors so I’d have something to give her, and then we’d be together in that small room, so close that I could smell her perfume, neither of us uttering a word. Sometimes, I’d be conscious that she had stopped typing, and when I looked up she’d be studying me with an expression that was more suggestive of perplexity and suspicion than the affection I would have preferred. And she always looked quickly away, before I could smile, as if she were conscious of having betrayed her innermost thoughts.

Paradoxically, even though I doubted that Tria Ward felt much attraction, I began to be uncharacteristically certain that before long she would extend me the invitation. Such arrogance, I hasten to add, was far from customary. In my relations with other young women to this point in my life, I had always been rather pessimistic about my prospects, a circumstance born of experience. I’d been told that I struck most girls as gloomy, and at the university one honest sorority girl I had badgered about going out said that she had nothing against me personally, except that when she went out with a guy, like, she preferred to have a good time, you know? I knew. Perhaps I was confident about Tria because I was beginning to suspect that she was
not
the sort of girl who preferred to have a good time.