This Is My Life (15 page)

“I hate to be away your first night home,” Dottie said, “but Sy got these tickets ages ago. Bobby Short. I figured you could amuse yourself for tonight.”

Sy arrived half an hour later, before Dottie had finished dressing, and Opal let him in. He was short and soft around the edges, with a damp, downturned mustache. Sy appeared loud and coarse and amiable all at the same time, and he possessed one surprising feature: his clothes. As a garment manufacturer, he had access to elegant, beautiful clothes: unstructured linen suits in pale wheat tones, ties with intricate, delicate patterns etched in the weave, Italian shoes that were as glossy and tapered as race cars.

“I think I'll wander around until your old mother is ready,” Sy said after he and Opal had shaken hands and exchanged a few awkward words in the doorway.

It was clear that Sy had spent a lot of time in the apartment, and Opal watched as he walked casually through the living room. He picked a few browning leaves off a coleus, and then he plucked a handful of pistachios from a silver bowl on the table. Finally he sat down on the couch and unfolded the daily crossword puzzle from his breast pocket. “Care to join me?” he asked, but Opal shook her head. “I'm a fanatic about puzzles,” he said, and he uncapped his pen and gazed off into space for the answer to the first clue.

Finally Dottie was ready. She entered the room quietly, her perfume slightly preceding her, and Opal saw that she was wearing one of the dresses from her line of clothes. Her hair was swept up off her neck, and her head seemed smaller than usual. Or was it just that her body was
larger
than usual? Since she had fallen in love with Sy, Dottie seemed to have been eating more than she used to. Sy believed in excess, Dottie said, and he often took her to twelve-course banquets at a dumpling house on Mott Street. He referred to her flesh as “love handles,” and
he grabbed her by the waist and swung her around like a Tilt-a-Whirl.

Opal watched her mother and Sy together, saw the way they touched frequently, using small, understated gestures. Dottie lightly fingered his collar, and he rested a hand on her hip as they stood at the door.

“We'll be home very late,” Dottie said. “You know where everything is; just help yourself.” Then they were off. Opal stood and stretched, listening for a moment to the uncompromising quiet of the apartment. There was no chorus of stereos up and down the hallway, no whiffs of dope and hot-plate cuisine, no one accidentally setting off a fire alarm with a Frisbee. All she could hear was the intermittent hum and whir of the refrigerator making ice, and the sound was lulling, deadening. She knew she would have to do something while she lived here, or else the semester would just keep unrolling, with Dottie and Sy breezing in and out of the apartment and Opal stationed once again before the TV.

—

T
wo days later, Opal sat in a chair in Ross Needler's office while the lights on his telephone blinked and a secretary kept coming in to silently hand him pink memos. Opal glanced above his head at the assortment of photographs on the wall. Somewhere up there, in that collage of faces, loomed her mother. Opal tried to peer at the wall surreptitiously.

“Top row,” Ross said, “all the way on the left.”

Opal was embarrassed. “Sorry,” she said.

“Why be sorry?” Ross asked. “If my mother was on somebody's wall, I'd want to look too.”

“Not if it was the post office,” Opal said.

“Very quick,” said Ross. “Just like your mother.” He sighed and leaned back in his chair. “Look, I don't know of any real jobs,” he said. “Nothing that pays, anyway. You have no experience whatsoever, and you're young. I could maybe find you an internship, but it would be scut work. Nothing challenging, but you might have fun. In fact,” he said, “I do know someone who owes me a small favor. If you'll bear with me, I'll see what I can do.”

She watched as he spun a fat Rolodex file. Years before, Ross used to squeeze the flesh of her face and call her “kiddo,” and he would bring an armload of presents when he came to the apartment. He and Dottie would sit in the den all night, and Ross would have a big notebook open on the coffee table, or sometimes an adding machine. Together, they figured out salaries, schemes, dates for performances. The room always seemed rosy and swollen with smoke.

Ross hadn't changed dramatically since then, Opal thought. He had always looked old to her, his face long and lined. Now Ross made a few brief phone calls, and finally he located an assistant director friend who said he would probably be able to give Opal an internship at the television show
Rush Hour
. It was strictly gofer work, Ross warned her when he hung up. “The staff is young and smart,” he said, “and the ratings are good, as you know, so there's a decent morale around the set. They've already been renewed for next season.”

Rush Hour
had been enormously popular at Yale. There always seemed to be a group of people clustered around someone's television set every Friday night at ten to watch it. The show had a frenetic, young cast: souped-up, razzing men and women who
sang and danced and improvised their way through the hour. The format was modeled after the old
Mickey Mouse Club
, with cast members lining up and calling out their names at the beginning of each show. One of the men would always announce himself as “Annette.”

Before Opal could thank him, Ross said, “I wonder what your mother will say.”

Opal shrugged. “She'll be pleased, I hope,” she said. “She thought it was great that I was coming to see you.”

“Well,” said Ross, “I once mentioned
Rush Hour
to her, just in passing. I was talking about how there was a new wave of young talent out there, and your mother argued that there hasn't been a decent comedy show on TV for years. It's hard for her, I guess; you really can't blame her.” Opal agreed. “You know,” he said, “she's had a long, solid career. Over ten years. Compare that with most other performers, and it's incredible. Dancers are lucky if they last until twenty-five—their knees go and they get arthritis—and singers' voices are shot way before they're old. Some of the folksingers from the Sixties—those girls with their long hair and sweet voices—they sound like crap now, they really do. You can hear them on all the telethons. Dottie isn't necessarily
done
yet, you know.”

“Do you think she could really make a comeback?” Opal asked.

“Oh, who knows?” said Ross. “A career gets sleepy for a while, so you put it on hold. I've seen people snap back like you wouldn't believe. They appear somewhere for the first time in years, and then they get letters from people saying, ‘Oh, we thought you were dead.' There's a chance of reincarnation for your mother; she's just got to be patient.” He shook his head. “I just want to
make sure that she's doing all right, you know, emotionally. I thought maybe you could tell me that.”

“My mother's fine,” Opal said. “Really.” Ross kept watching her, waiting for her to elaborate. “She's fallen in love,” Opal added in a small voice, and she realized, as soon as she said it, how much she had wanted to tell someone. She looked for his response.

“Oh?” Ross said. “That's news. I'm glad to hear it. Anyone I know?” Opal told him about Sy. “Your mother deserves to be in love,” Ross went on. “It's been a long time.”

He fingered a few of the pink sheets of paper on his desk, and Opal stood awkwardly to leave, thanking him for his help. She had told him about Dottie, and now it was done. It didn't matter that she had told
him
, particularly; what mattered was the simple act of telling.

Opal thought back to the monologues she had listened to as a child, the rush of words that had poured out at her over the years. “Just listen to this,” Dottie had said. “Just listen to this,” the babysitters had said, and Opal had sat very still in her chair, patiently listening, until all the words ran out.

W
hen Jordan left the hospital, he refused to take his identification bracelet off. Erica was reminded of those girls in her high school who had worn POW and MIA bracelets even when it became apparent that no one was ever coming home. There had been something dramatic about it, the way the girls had compared wrists in study hall, reciting unfamiliar names as though they were the names of lovers. Now Jordan lay in the loft, his long arm dangling over the edge as he slept. Erica walked by and saw the strip of plastic, his own name typed in faint purple ink. He had been wearing the bracelet for weeks now.

Jordan hadn't been able to find any more work through the back of the
Village Voice
, and so he began to spend the days at home. Erica had no trouble finding surveys of overweight women; these seemed boundless. Between the two of them, though, they had very little money, and Jordan was down to cashing the last of his bar mitzvah savings bonds. He decided,
at the end of December, that he would try to sell drugs—nothing serious or scary, he said, just a small-fry operation—and so he got several names from his brother, a chemist who used to supply everyone at MIT.

Erica objected at first; she stood over him in the kitchen as he sat at the table, sifting and separating. “It's dangerous,” she said. “You could get arrested. I could get arrested.” Jordan didn't respond; he just kept working. Finally she gave in and watched; there was something gradually mesmerizing about the quick movements of his hands. He folded pages out of magazines into little origami packages that held half-grams of cocaine. Erica watched as he measured out the powder and poured it onto a color photograph of Miss Clairol, and she understood then how a pioneer wife must have felt watching her husband clean and load a gun.

Jordan's first customers would be coming over in half an hour. Erica found herself walking about the apartment before they arrived, taking little swipes at the furniture with a cloth; this was the closest thing to
company
they had ever had. When the downstairs buzzer rang, she flew down to open the outside door. Two teenage girls stood on the stoop bundled up in bright ski parkas. “We're looking for Jordan,” one said.

Erica stared, then let them in. She flattened herself against the wall and let them go up ahead of her. The girls were about sixteen, she guessed. They smelled of snow and shampoo, and they took the stairs two at a time. “Cute apartment,” one said when they were inside. They opened their jackets and shook their long dark hair free.

Jordan came out of the kitchen then, holding a large mirror as though it were a tray of hors d'oeuvres. “You're Mandy and
Parker?” he said, and they nodded. “Want to try some of the sniff before you go?”

Erica cringed. As usual, Jordan had his terminology wrong, but the girls didn't know. They sat on the ratty couch while Jordan opened the little packet and sliced up a few thin lines on the mirror he had taken down from over the dresser. Erica had had to use guesswork to make a part in her hair that morning. Now she stood in the doorway and watched as two shining heads bobbed down over the round mirror. The girls inhaled loudly, like truffle pigs.

They stayed for hours, doing lines and talking happily. Both of them, it turned out, were seniors at Headley. Jordan seemed thrilled to have them here, and Erica realized, with true surprise, that he was actually flirting with them. He was sitting up straighter than usual, his voice lively, and he was in no great hurry to have them leave.

“Is Mr. Catapano still teaching math?” Jordan asked.

Parker rolled her eyes. “What an old ass,” she said.

“Exactly!” said Jordan, his voice rising. “He'd be drawing a rhombus at the blackboard and he'd nod off.” Jordan sliced out another set of lines, more vigorously than before; his hand shook, and the lines came out streaky and thick as skywriting. “Is that awful mural still up?” he asked. “The one with Susan B. Anthony and Helen Keller and everybody?”

From the way he was speaking, Erica thought, you would think he had been president of the student body. Jordan was suddenly infused with nostalgia for a place he had despised, a place that had despised him. And now he was chumming around with two girls who thought he was something because he could get them what they wanted.

Erica felt like an old fishwife standing in the background. She walked through the small rooms aimlessly. Next time, she thought, she ought to wear a housecoat and pink scuffs on her feet; that would complete the picture. As it was, the two girls weren't paying her any attention. They were doing imitations for Jordan of one of the English teachers. Mandy was standing up and saying, “People. Pee-
pull
! Remember, it's
your
time you're wasting, not just mine.”

When the sky darkened and they were finally about to leave, Jordan was bouncing up and down a little on his heels. “Any time,” he said. “Call any time, day or night.” Then he carried the mirror back into the bedroom.

The two girls pulled on their coats, and Erica was suddenly seized with need. She opened the door to let them out, then spoke quickly. “Look,” she whispered in the hallway, “he was very unpopular in high school. We both were. You would have hated him, really. You would have made fun of him.”

The two girls stared at each other, their faces suddenly emptied of expression, a trick they must have taught themselves to keep from cracking up at moments like this. Without saying a word, they were gone. Within seconds, Erica could hear them howling in the stairwell.

After that day, Jordan put all his energy into the business. Erica would walk into the apartment and find the stereo blasting, and Jordan sitting in the kitchen, bent over what looked like a small city of anthills. Erica didn't really like cocaine, and didn't understand what all the excitement was about, all those articles she had read about white mice mangling each other to get at a dropper of spiked water. Sometimes at night Jordan would bring the mirror up into the loft and slice out a few careful lines. What
startled Erica most was seeing her own reflection, big and wavy and florid in the glass. It was too close, too much; how were you supposed to relax when you were practically touching foreheads with yourself? And the sensation itself was nothing more than a kind of thready anxiety followed by a viscous, bitter drip down the back of the throat. For some reason, everyone in the world wanted to be anxious, wanted to be hopped up. Erica was the exception, the mouse that stayed curled in the corner, ignoring the shadow of the dropper overhead.

She wondered if Jordan was really interested in cocaine, either; what he liked best, she thought, was the company. People suddenly came to him—called on the phone and showed up night after night. Mandy and Parker returned, and they sent some of their friends as well. Jordan began playing host to every twelfth-grader in New York. The apartment had a steady hum to it, the buzzer going, the stereo playing. “Put on an album; whatever you like,” Jordan would say magnanimously to sixteen-year-old boys, because he knew it was their idea of heaven.

Boys with transparent mustaches would crouch down over the records, or stand at the bookshelf going through Jordan's science-fiction collection. “Oh, God!” they would say, slapping their heads. “You have a first edition of
Alpha State Centurions
!”

Erica was the housemother of them all; she brewed sun tea on the kitchen window and stocked the cabinets with extra Pepperidge Farm cookies, even though the bugs got to them within hours. There were bugs everywhere in the apartment, and they didn't care if you watched them or not, that was how nervy they were. In the morning they staggered off Erica's toothbrush, drunk on fluoride.

She had to get out; everything was too close, too much. One
morning she went over to NYU to take part in another study. The graduate student running it was obese himself, which surprised her. His name was Mitchell Block, and he had a large, intelligent face smothered in a beard. Everything about him was drawn on a much larger scale than ordinary; he looked like one of those plaster lumberjack statues that stand outside pancake houses off interstate highways.

Scale was always a source of fascination; Erica still remembered looking at a Diane Arbus photograph in high school called “Jewish Giant at Home with his Parents,” and how she had cried out softly when she first saw it. The young giant had towered above his bewildered, shrunken parents, ducking so as not to go through their ceiling. When you were big, whether it was tall or wide, you worried that no place could contain you, that you were taking up too much space in the universe, swallowing too much air.

“Erica,” Mitchell Block said, his voice soft. “Erica, listen closely.”

When he spoke her name, she felt a chill ripple across her forearms; it was as though he somehow
knew
things about her. But her name was typed plainly on the index card he held between his fingers. He had probably sat there all morning, saying, “Susan, Susan, listen closely; Michelle, Michelle, listen closely.” And those overweight women, peering out from inside their caves, had suddenly become alert, because no one had called them by name in years, and no one's voice had ever carried so far inside the cave.

Mitchell said they were going to play word association, and Erica wanted very much to do well; perhaps, she thought, she could respond in a way that would make him think he was really onto something significant here. He would say “food,” and
without skipping a beat she would return with “love.” He would say “body,” and she would answer “hate.” His eyes would widen, and the list of words would come quicker; the two of them would volley for minutes.

But the words he gave her had no logical connection to one another. There was not a single food reference, unless you counted “table,” but that was stretching it. When Mitchell had gone down the entire list, he put his pencil down and smiled.

“Thank you, that was fine,” he said. “Now comes the time for me to confess something. I wasn't really paying attention to your responses at all. I was just looking at your eye movements; that's what the study is all about. I'm curious to see if very overweight people really feel connected to the world, or whether, even when they're engaged in conversation, they're somewhere else entirely. Hiding in their own world.”

“And what did you find?” Erica asked.

Mitchell Block smiled again. “I'm not supposed to go into it,” he said. “But let's just say I think you're still living in the real world.”

“Oh, I try to drop in whenever I can,” said Erica.

He laughed, and she felt herself flush. “Well,” he said, pushing back his chair and standing up. “I've got to get on with more of these. But thank you, Erica; I've enjoyed talking to you.” He held out his hand, and she felt as though she were grasping a big catcher's mitt, one that was humanly warm.

—

T
hat night Jordan was jumpy—itchy with the static of winter, and wanting to move around. He stuffed a little lump of cocaine into his nose and let it melt there; he didn't have the
patience to go through the whole chopping ceremony. “Let's go out,” he said. “Anywhere.”

They walked through the lightly falling snow to a bar in the West Village that Jordan said he knew well. He had an embarrassing habit of trying to engage old bartenders in conversation at the end of the night. He would hang around while a bartender ran a rag across the wood. Jordan would sit and swivel on his stool, gnawing a swizzle stick, talking compulsively about anything, nothing. It excited him to be in the company of old men, men whom he thought of as having
lived
. In the spring it was worse; Jordan liked to sit in Washington Square Park, talking to the old chess players who sat concentrating at stone tables. Erica sometimes had to pull him away so the men could finish their game. He was a joke, she thought, although none of the old men ever laughed at him. They just seemed to tolerate him, looking up at him with slow, surprised eyes every time Jordan said something that made no sense.

When Erica and Jordan walked into the bar, it was apparent that it had changed management since Jordan had been there last. Several men stood milling around, a few of them in leather, and others sat by themselves at tables, chairs tilted back against the wall, beers in hand, eyes closing sleepily. On the wall, a television with a screen the size of a picture window showed Joan Collins in close-up, but the sound was turned off. It was a slow night at a gay bar, Erica realized.

Jordan looked perplexed. “It used to be called Paddy's,” he whispered. “I'm sure of it. Just a little neighborhood place with a pool table.” He walked back outside to peer at the sign over the door. “The Grist Mill,” he said. He plucked at the knees of
his corduroys. “We can go if you want; you might feel uncomfortable here, being a woman.”

“
You
might feel uncomfortable here, being a man,” she said.

At that moment the overhead lights clicked out, and a spotlight was pointed on the small platform in the back. Erica quickly sat down to duck the light, and Jordan followed. It was a drag show; the opening number was a decent lip-synch version of “New York, New York.” A man was dressed as Liza Minelli, with a black wig plastered to his head, and false eyelashes as big as starfish. “This one's for Mama!” he was saying.

“Do you want to go?” Jordan whispered. “We could sneak out when he's done.”

But something made Erica want to stay. Maybe she saw it coming, maybe in some way she knew. She settled in, ordered a Scotch, and watched the show. The man onstage was now doing a medley of Barbra Streisand numbers, crossing his eyes on every other line, saying, “Oh, Mr. Arnstein,” straining for laughs. The Wednesday-night audience was small and scattered but polite. They clapped when each song was over, and no one left the bar.

It was right after the requisite Diana Ross number that the man came back onstage in a huge, billowing dress with a polka-dot pattern. The imitation was dead-on: the big spheres of rouge, the fleshy orange lips, the hair piled up like hay. And all the movements were right, too; the man traveled the stage the way Dottie used to—arms flailing, describing circles in the air. “Look, look, is it what I think?” Jordan said. “Is it? Is it?”