The Wonder Spot (21 page)

Across from me, Francine was reading a manuscript. She was more virtuous than I would ever be, she had done more homework than I would ever do, and here she was, buried in slush.

Adam, the embodiment of discretion, called me on the phone.

“Are you okay?” he said.

I told him that I was alive and unfired.

. . . . .

I. Tittlebaum drove in from New Jersey later that week.

Honey called and asked me to come down to her office to meet him. “Bring Clarisse,” she said.

I said, “Francine.”

Francine looked up at me.

I. Tittlebaum was taller than his name seemed to suggest, and much younger than the character in his novel. He couldn't possibly have teenaged children, and if his wife had left him, she'd come back or he'd found somebody else; he wore a wedding band.

Wolfe nodded at Francine and me, but he let Honey make the introductions. She said, “Irv, I want you to meet the assistant who found your book in the slush pile: Francine Lawlor.”

For some reason, he reached out to shake my hand.

“No,” I said, and my voice was louder than it should've been, because his thinking I was Francine, or wanting me to be, added insult to the injury of her not getting her due.

Honey's expression didn't change, though I was pretty sure she thought my faux pas had ruined her faux tribute.

“This is Francine,” I said, though she was already shaking hands with the author.

She said, “It's a wonderful book, Mr. Tittlebaum.”

He said, “Thank you,” and in it you could hear that he was thanking her for everything, thanking her for more than Honey would've liked.

He stood there gazing at Francine until Honey nabbed the
attention back. “And this is my assistant, Sophie Applebaum,” she said, pronouncing my name like it was an important one for him to know.

I said, “Hi.”

Wolfe said, “Francine, will you join us for lunch?”

“Thank you,” she said, “but I have work to do.”

. . . . .

Francine and I walked down the hall back to the Cave without talking. She stopped at her desk, but I knew that if I were in her place, I would need to cry—I felt like crying in my own place—so I said, “Come on,” and led her out the back door and past the restrooms. Her eyes widened a little when I opened the door to the smoking balcony.

“I'm surprised it isn't locked,” she said.

I said, “I know.”

The sky was cloudy, with a pale sun. It was almost spring. I'd never seen Francine in natural light, and in the sun I saw now that her hair was more white than blond.

We were both looking out at the buildings, though there wasn't really anything to see. I was trying to think of something reassuring to say to her; I was trying to think of what I'd want someone to say to me.

But when I looked over, her face wasn't sad. If anything, she looked serene. Maybe she was remembering the grateful look I. Tittlebaum had given her. She might have just felt glad that she'd done her job well and found a good book for Steinhardt to publish. Or maybe she knew that in a few weeks Wolfe would promote her.

Whatever it was, I was relieved that she wasn't upset. It made me feel less guilty about giving
We
to Honey.

I took my pack of cigarettes out and offered one to her almost as a joke, but she took it. I lit it for her.

I thought she'd just hold it and take non-inhaling puffs like my grandmother, but she smoked like a smoker.

“You smoke?” I said.

“Yes,” she said.

This cheered me up a little. It made me think that there might be other things I didn't know about this talented editor, Dreiser lover, Ursinus alumna, and citizen of Carteret, New Jersey. I hoped there were.

W
HEN
MY
BROTHER
tells me he's been seeing a psychiatrist, I say, “That's great, Jack.”

He says, “What—you think I'm fucked up?”

I say, “How'd you find him?”

He says, “What makes you think my psychiatrist is a man?”

Her name is Mary Pat Delmar, and Jack tells me she is brilliant. He says, “She blows me away,” and I think they must be talking a lot about junior high.

“Wow,” I say.

He smiles. “I told her you'd say that.”

When he tells me how beautiful she is, I say, “But not so beautiful that you have trouble concentrating?”

“She's pretty beautiful,” he says. Plus impressive: She won a scholarship to college, for example, and put herself through medical school; she grew up in rural Tennessee, where her parents still run a luncheonette.

I say, “She told you all that?”

“Yeah,” he says. “Why?”

“I don't think of psychiatrists talking that much.”

It's not until he tells me that they're not in Freudian analysis and breaks out laughing that I realize he's not in analysis at all. Mary Pat is his new girlfriend.

He laughs like a madman, and I say, “Very funny,” though it is, in fact, very funny just to hear Jack laugh, as well as a huge relief: Our father died not even two months ago.

My eggs and Jack's pancakes are set before us, and we stop talking to eat; we're at Homer's, the diner around the corner from his apartment in the Village.

I ask how he met Mary Pat.

He tells me, “Pete referred her.”

For a moment he gets waylaid talking about the fishing shack he helped Pete restore this summer. Pete lives year-round on Martha's Vineyard with his Newfoundland, Lila, who expresses her heartache by howling to Billie Holiday records:
Dog, you don't know the trouble I seen.

Jack says Pete called when M.P. moved to town. “I think he's always been a little in love with her.”

I say nothing; I have always been a little in love with Pete.

. . . . .

Though Jack didn't say he'd bring Mary Pat, I'm a little disappointed when he arrives at Homer's without her. “Just coffee,” he says to the waiter.

He tells me that M.P. was mugged on her way home from work, and he was up half the night trying to calm her down.

“Jesus,” I say, and ask where and when, and was there a weapon?

A knife; ten
P
.
M
.
; a block from her apartment on Avenue D.

I say, “She lives on Avenue D?” D is for Drugs, D is for Danger, D is for Don't live on Avenue D unless you have to.

Jack says, “It's what she can afford.”

“I thought psychiatrists cleaned up.”

“Maybe in private practice,” he says.

As Dr. Delmar, Mary Pat treats survivors of torture in a program at NYU Hospital.

From spending weeks at my father's bedside I have become alive to a level of pain I'd never known: Now I feel it on every street of Manhattan, in every column in the newspaper, and just the idea of someone who works to ease suffering eases mine.

I say, “When can I meet her?”

“Soon.”

Sounding like a worried mother, I say, “She should take a cab when she works late.”

“She says walking is her only exercise.”

. . . . .

When I arrive at the White Horse, Jack says, “Want to sit outside?”

It's November. “Why would I want to sit outside?”

He tells me that M.P. will; after spending all day in the hospital, she craves fresh air. He takes off his leather jacket and hands it to me, an act of chivalry in the name of Mary Pat.

I give in. “You love this girl.”

He howls a mock-forlorn, “I do,” imitating a country singer or Newfoundland.

We maneuver our legs under a picnic table; we are the sole outsiders, and Jack has to go inside to get the waitress.

We both order scotch for warmth.

Jack yawns and tells me that he and Mary Pat were up most of the night, discussing his new screenplay. He tells me that her notes are incredibly smart, unbelievably smart—smarter than his actual screenplay.

It occurs to me that I have never heard him more sure of any woman and less sure of himself.

He catches sight of his dramaturge across the street, and I turn to look.

She is tall and skinny in high heels. She has long, wavy hair. Her cheeks are flushed, and when she sees Jack she smiles, activating dimples.

Her hand is limp in mine, her voice shivery as she says, “Pleased to meet you.”

She kisses Jack full on the mouth and then says she thinks she's coming down with something; do we mind sitting inside?

Once we're seated, I pretend, as I always do with Jack's girlfriends, that I already like her: I tell her that I can hardly sit in high heels, let alone walk in them, and how does she do it?

“I don't know,” she says.

Jack puts his hand across her forehead, and his eyebrows slant up in worry. “You have a fever.”

“If you're sick,” I say, “we can have dinner another night.”

“No, no,” she says. “I like a fever.” Her smile is wan, her skin shiny. “You know, through the glass darkly.”

I do not know; I'm not even sure I've heard her correctly. Her voice is so quiet I strain just for fragments.

We pick up our menus.

“I'm going to have a cheeseburger and fries,” I say.

Jack says, “Same here.”

Mary Pat says, “I don't think I can eat a whole one myself.”

“You can share mine,” he says.

“You don't mind?”

My brother, who usually slaps my hand if I take one of his fries, does not mind.

When our burgers arrive, Mary Pat ignores the extra plate brought for sharing and eats right off Jack's. Instead of cutting the cheeseburger in half, she takes a bite, and then he does. She even uses his napkin to wipe her mouth. I am reminded of the aid organization Doctors Without Borders.

“Jack told me that you met through Pete,” I say.

“Oh, yes.” She says, “He warned your brother about me,” and the two of them seem to think this is funny.

I play along—ha, ha, ha: “What did he say?”

Jack asks Mary Pat, “What did he say?”

She says, “I'm trouble?” her voice so lush with sex, I think,
Hey, M.P., I'm right here, Jack's little sister, across the table.

Her body reacts to the smallest shift in his; they are in constant bodily contact. She doesn't touch Jack directly, but rubs herself against him almost incidentally, like a cat. The one time he reaches for her hand, she lets him hold it for less than a minute; then she takes it back and hides it in the dark under the table.

Maybe because of her whispery voice or her ethereal skinniness or her glass-darkly fever, Mary Pat gives the impression of not quite
being here at the table, here at the White Horse, here on Earth. To assure myself of my own existence, I counter her quiet voice by raising mine, counter her little bites by taking big ones.

I try to talk to her, but it is just me asking questions and her answering them. My questions get longer, her answers shorter. Still I don't quit. I'm like a gambler who keeps thinking,
Maybe the next hand.

The name of her parents' luncheonette? Delmar's.

The division of labor? Her father cooks; her mother serves.

If we were at Delmar's now, we'd order . . . ? “Meat 'n' Two.”

I say, “Meat and two?”

“One meat and two sides.”

I love sides; I ask which are best.

“Butter beans,” she says. “Grits, if you like grits.”

I nod the nod of a grits liker, though not a single grit has ever entered my mouth. I say, “Did you hang out at the luncheonette a lot growing up?”

“Yes.”

I say, “Was it fun?”

“No,” she says, making clear that she doesn't want to talk about this or to talk to me or to talk. She says, “Excuse me,” and goes to the ladies' room.

“What?” I say to Jack.

He says, “She can't talk about her father.”

“Were we talking about her father?”

When she returns, Jack puts his arm around her.

I say, “I didn't mean to pry.”

Mary Pat says a wounded, “Don't worry about it.”

. . . . .

Jack does not call to ask what I think of Mary Pat, as he has with every other girlfriend he has ever introduced to me. He doesn't call at all.

When I call him, he is in bed with a fever of 103.

I offer to bring him soup, and he says that he has soup and juice and everything he needs—left over from when he took care of Mary Pat.

. . . . .

A week later, when I call to ask if we're meeting at Homer's, he's still in bed.

He says that his fever is down; he just doesn't feel good.

I say, “What's the matter, Buddy?” our father's nickname for Jack.

“She hated my revision.”

“What?”

“I told you she gave me notes on my script,” he says. “She said I didn't understand anything.”

I say, “You want me to come over?”

“Yeah,” he says, and I go.

His night table is a mess of drugs—NyQuil, DayQuil, Sudafed, Theraflu—a sticky dose cup, a mug, and a tea bag that looks like a mouse in rigor mortis. His bed is covered with screenplay pages and used Kleenexes, which, he says, are of equal value to Mary Pat.

“Does she know that your father died nine weeks ago?”

He says, “I asked her to be honest.”

It takes me a minute to understand that he is defending her against me.

I clean up, I take his temperature, I make tea. I am stirring soup when Mary Pat calls, apparently contrite.

“She's coming over,” Jack says, which means I'm supposed to go.

. . . . .

Jack arrives at Homer's, blurry with exhaustion and hobbling. He tells me that he's been working out. “I just overdid it.” He says something indecipherable through a yawn, and, “. . . up really late.”

I ask if he was working on his screenplay.

“No.” He yawns. “No.”

I yawn.

“We stayed up late, talking,” he says.

“Do you babies ever sleep through the night?”

He says, “She was upset.”

I think of the work that Mary Pat does and the stories she must hear every day.

“I woke up,” Jack says, “and she was crying.”

I nod in sympathy.

His voice is cloudy with sleep. “She kept telling me how sorry she was.”

I say, “Why was she sorry?”

He seems suddenly to focus, and to realize that he might not want to tell me this story. He hesitates before going on, but he does go on, too tired to obey his instincts. “She's still in love with her old boyfriend.”

The words seem to spell out
The End,
and yet I don't hear
The End
in his voice or see
The End
in his face.

I say, “If she loves him so much, how come she broke up with him?”

I watch Jack try to remember. “She didn't feel she deserved to be happy back then.”

What comes to mind is Jack's rendition of the Talking Heads' song he changed from “Psycho Killer” to “Psycho Babble,” and the refrain, “Run run run run run run run away.”

I say, “When didn't she deserve to be happy?”

“Her freshman year,” he says. “He was a senior. Physics major. He played squash.”

I'm confused. “So, she's been seeing him since her freshman year?”

“No,” he says.

“She ran into him?”

“No.”

“But she wants to get back together with him?”

“No,” he says. “He's married with two kids. She doesn't even know where he lives.”

It occurs to me that I might understand this story better if I were really, really tired.

My poor brother's eyes are tiny and his skin clam-colored; his hand trembles as he returns his coffee cup to the puddle in his saucer. He says, “The good thing is . . .” and drifts off.