Thief of Words (5 page)
“There you have it,” Annie said. “Annie Hollerman as sound bite.”
“What happened between those sentences?” said Jack.
Soon she was telling him about growing up in New Jersey, her summer weeks in Atlantic City, her father leaving when she was ten. “That made me the only kid with a single mom, the only kid with a mom who worked,” Annie said. “This is going to sound stupid, but for years the thing I wanted most were waxed floors.”
Jack looked puzzled. “Waxed floors?”
“If I’d had waxed floors that’d meant my mother was like all the mothers on the TV commercials, the ones that stayed home and waxed their floors.”
She smiled. “Now you know what’s between the sentences—a yearning for floor wax.”
Then it was Jack’s turn. He marched Annie through his newspaper career:
Oakland Tribune, Rochester Democrat, San Diego Tribune, Baltimore Star-News.
He talked about his son, Matthew; bragged, in fact. Of his marriage he said, “After twenty years it was like we didn’t know each other. Nothing dramatic. We just bored each other.” But even as he said it, he knew it sounded lame and incomplete. All he said of life after divorce was this: “I’ve had one relationship. It was pyrotechnic—and disastrous. I should have had the good sense to stay away from her.”
Eventually he brought out the well-polished tale of Willoughby Treffle. He finished off his story with a sigh. “Now I’m just a guy in the comma factory,” he said.
“You’re not getting off that easily,” said Annie. She knew he was being modest. He was features editor at one of the country’s top papers. Plus Laura had said he’d actually improved her stories. That, from any reporter, is a mouthful; that, from Laura, was a whole Thanksgiving dinner.
“I told you my stuff between the sentences, now it’s your turn. For example, why Pablo Neruda?”
For the first time since they sat down, Jack didn’t have a snappy comeback. “What do you mean, Pablo Neruda?”
“Why’d you go halfway around the world to see where he lived?”
“How’d you know?”
“Laura said you were a Neruda nut. She told me you’d won an award for a story about him.”
Jack gave her a sheepish look. “It’s true. A girlfriend gave me a book of his poetry in college. It was the first time anybody ever gave me poetry. I loved him right off. He has a great appetite for life, a great passion for everything—from women to the windows in his house. I’d have given anything to have met him. Second best was seeing where he lived.”
He looked down at his plate. “I still have it. That book. I took it with me on the Chile trip.”
Poetry. That was 60 points right there for Jack. Another 30 came when the waiter passed by with the pepper mill. “Pepper?” he’d asked, and started grinding after Jack said yes. He was about to stop when Jack looked up at him with the smallest pleading in his eyes and said, “I like a lot of pepper.” That’s when Annie saw it, in the most trivial of moments, the flash of a hurt so deep it made her wonder what could have happened to him and why it looked so familiar.
The salads and pastas came and went. The dialogue moved rhythmically; long thoughtful answers followed short peppery quips. Their list of mutualities surprised and delighted them: the secret joy of dissing Raymond Carver, the shame of homelessness, the brilliance of Gabriel Márquez, the brilliance of Lyle Lovett, the brilliance of fresh basil, Peer Gynt’s onion soliloquy, the deliciousness of Shakespearean insults—“Hang ye, gorbellied knaves!”—and the most memorable line in
Goodbye Columbus,
which startled them both as they said in unison, “His hair stopped smelling like raisins.” Somewhere in the second hour, they reached the topic of religion. Annie said she discovered hers at Camp Reeta, where on Friday night she’d dress in white shorts and a white T-shirt and sing the prayers of her Jewish ancestors alongside the boys from Camp Arthur. “They were the happiest days of my childhood. The only time I ever felt like I belonged to something.”
Those two unguarded sentences disconcerted Jack as if he’d been given a surprise Christmas gift and had nothing in return. He switched the subject—but not too far to be obvious—and asked if she’d ever been to Israel.
She shook her head.
“Hell, Annie, I’m a better Jew than you are and I’m not even Jewish. I lived on a kibbutz for six months.”
“When?”
“Twenty-five years ago. I mostly picked grapefruit. I’m proud to say that Tony Prickett and I were personally responsible for picking one-tenth of one percent of the entire export crop to Europe that year. Oh, and also I sexed chickens.”
“What?”
“Finally, something Laura didn’t tell you. At one time I was a serial chicken sexer.” Jack explained that chicken sexers determined the sex of newly hatched chicks. He also explained that the two things he loved most in the world—his true religion if he were to confess it to her—were playing basketball with Matthew and traveling. Along with his Israel and Chile stories, he told her of a summer bumming around Europe and a trek in Nepal.
“I wish my passport had as many stamps,” said Annie. “We— I’ve been to France and Spain. And a lot of ski places in the U.S. Trip—that’s the ex—wasn’t much of an adventurer.”
“Funny name for a guy who doesn’t like to travel,” Jack said. “You’re not the first to say that,” Annie replied. “Trip had to control every situation—including me, his most difficult situation. He couldn’t stand not knowing the language, so that’s why we didn’t go abroad much.”
“That’s too bad. Not knowing is half the fun.”
Annie slapped the table like a lawyer in summation. “That’s right. I loved trying to bargain. I loved trying to talk to little old Spanish men in cafés. It’s amazing what you can do with a phrase book and a smile.”
“At least you got to Spain. Trip couldn’t have been that bad, could he?”
“Well, you be the judge,” Annie said. “Our first trip outside the U.S. was Spain. Trip spent most of the time looking at phrase books and maps. When we got to Jerez, the man at our hotel couldn’t stop talking about how lucky we were to be there because Renatta Vega-Marone was going to be in town that night. Turns out she’s one of the most famous flamenco dancers in the world and was going to perform at a music festival in the central square.
“The hotel man kept telling us not to miss it, that we were truly blessed to have arrived then because it would be her only performance there for years. But she wasn’t due on stage until about midnight, and Trip wanted to be in bed early. He’d planned a long drive the next day and said he wanted to be ‘fresh’ to navigate the roads. I could have gone on my own, but what’s the fun if you don’t have someone to share it with?”
Annie made a small, rueful smile. The same kind of smile, though Jack didn’t know it, that he’d given the pepper mill waiter.
“Oh well,” she said. “You can’t rewrite your past, can you?” Somehow they’d found time in their long conversation to order dessert: one sunken chocolate mousse cake and two forks. When it arrived, Jack said, “You know something, Annie, this may be my first blind-date lunch. How am I doing? What do you think?”
For a second Annie was confused. Blind date? Blind date! My God, I’d forgotten, just ninety minutes ago this man was a complete stranger. And now he’s Jack. What do I think? Well, I talked nonstop for an hour and half to a journalist and I’m not dead. In fact, I even had fun. I talked about what I love and what I hate and about New Jersey. I talked about waxed floors and I talked about my missed night in Jerez.
What do I think? I think it was a mistake to fight Laura so hard in the past. This blind-date stuff isn’t so bad. I think I wonder what that other
Star-News
guy was like; maybe I should’ve gone out with him, too. I think I’m tired of sitting alone reading books. I think a million things and about 979,000 of them are how Jack must look without those dumb pleated pants and smoky-gray shirt.
“Oh hell, Annie, that was a stupid question. You don’t have to answer,” he said, the fingers of his left hand dancing along the ghost keys of the invisible piano he’d played throughout their lunch.
“I don’t mind,” said Annie. She caught two of those fingers in hers. “For a beginner, you’re doing very well.”
A
long day at work followed Jack’s long lunch. Afterward, the music critic had dragged him to Meyerhof Hall, where the symphony was performing Mahler’s Second under the baton of the new conductor. Dinner had been coffee and carrot cake in the symphony hall foyer. He hadn’t gotten home until close to midnight.
But when the lights were finally off and before the tide of fatigue pulled him under, Jack replayed the moment, feeling again the cool, dry fingers, the gentle pressure. Annie’s fingers on his. They had held him for several heartbeats.
He decided he should have looked deep into her eyes, holding her with his piercing gaze, while projecting a soulful world-weariness, and replied, “I guess it’s just beginner’s luck.” Or “What do I have to do to become an intermediate?”
But of course he hadn’t done anything like that. Instead he had looked down in embarrassment, his two fingers, freed from Annie’s grasp, still pointing toward the invisible piano. Who knows how long they would have stayed that way if the waiter hadn’t stopped by?
“Anything else, sir?”
Jack looked at his hand hanging in midair, then up at the waiter. For a second he couldn’t find the words in his brain—or his brain.
Annie stepped in. “I think we’re fine,” she said. “Just the check, please.”
Jack was certain he’d made a fool of himself. But then she smiled at him, and he knew it wasn’t the smile of a reduced evaluation.
“So,” she said, “what’s on your agenda this afternoon?”
And for the first time since they’d met, Jack looked at his watch.
“Oh my God,” Jack said. “It’s two forty-five! I have a meeting with the restaurant critic in ten minutes. If I’m late and he’s missed his meds he’ll probably hold my assistant hostage with a knife at her throat. And I’m not kidding.”
That made Annie’s smile even broader.
“If you hear sirens going toward Calvert Street,” he said, “you’ll know I’ve gotten there too late. I’m sorry I have to rush.” He pulled some bills from his wallet and tossed them on the table.
He started to rise, but Annie motioned him to sit. She raised her glass to him and said, “Here’s to Willoughby Treffle.” Jack raised his glass to her and said, “Here’s to floor wax.”
He wanted to say more, say something about how easy Annie was to talk to, how he wished the afternoon could stretch into evening, but an image of the throbbing veins in the restaurant critic’s neck stopped him. “Oh man,” he said, “I’d love to stay, but…”
Again she did it. She touched him. She reached her hand to his right shoulder and gave it a light squeeze.
“Me too,” she said. “But I’ve got my own psychopaths to deal with.”
As they rushed out, Jack tried to think of a clever way to say good-bye. But when they got to Annie’s old red Mustang convertible, the only words Jack could find were these: “Lizzie Siddal’s got nothing on you.”
“Lizzie Siddal?” Annie said, the left side of her face crunching up in question. “Who’s that?”
Jack turned and started to run to his car. “Look her up.”
At the time it seemed like a clever thing to say. But replaying that conversation hours later, he knew how stupid it must’ve sounded. Lizzie Siddal. Lizzie Siddal? What was I thinking? She probably thinks I’m a jerk for bringing up another woman. Why couldn’t I just have kept things simple? Simple and to the point, like, “Would you like to go out again?”
Or…
Jack fell asleep practicing all the lines he should have said.
F
orty-seven miles away Annie Hollerman was also musing, but not about Jack DePaul.
Not at this particular moment. She’d already worked and reworked the lunch enough to rewrite it the way it should have been—if she wasn’t such a blabbermouth. Someday she’d learn the art of mystery. Someday she wouldn’t tell a man twenty minutes into meeting him every last detail about her father. Maybe Trip was right, maybe she was a “pathological revealer.”
But then again, maybe he was wrong. She hadn’t revealed anything about her years at the
Charlotte Commercial-Appeal.
She’d actually held something back. She almost felt like calling Trip to tell him. But that would involve caring about what Trip thought, and it had been a very, very long time since she’d felt that way.
It had also been a long time since she’d cared about what a man thought of her. Sure, she’d wondered if Martin the energy analyst thought her thighs were fat when things got steamy between them nine months ago. But that’s pretty much as far as her musings went. Their affair wasn’t much more than a biological release for her. After three weeks, she’d told him it was over.
After just one lunch with Jack, Annie found herself caring about whether she’d said too much or worn the wrong thing or… just caring.
But now, as much as she would have preferred thinking about Jack, all she could think about was her mother and the inquisition. She’d just called. Not that an evening call from Joan Hollerman Silver was unusual. Or an afternoon call. Or a morning call.
She called all the time. “Just checking in.” “So what’s new?” “Had your Pap test this year?” “How’s the weightlifting coming?” Anything. She was like June Cleaver on steroids. Now. Now that Annie was an adult. But when Annie had been the Beav’s age, the only June Cleaver was on television, making birthday cakes for Wally or Ward or the Beav. Annie’s mother had never baked a cake in her life, nor much cottoned to the concept of mothering little kids. Annie always felt like she had to go way beyond the normal kid stuff to get her mother’s attention. No Annie-original drawings were ever taped to the refrigerator in the Hollerman house. It wasn’t until Annie won the sixth-grade poster contest that Annie’s mother even noticed her daughter could draw.
But now. Now. NOW. Annie had become her mother’s project. Her last project, after she’d moved from Hackensack, New Jersey, to Greensboro, North Carolina, had been law school. Never mind that she didn’t have a college degree. So at age forty-six, Annie’s mother became a coed. She’d even convinced the dean to give her college credits for the years she worked as a bookkeeper when Annie was a little girl. And at age fifty-three, Joan Hollerman Silver became the oldest graduate of Wake Forest University Law School.
