Whenever You Call (5 page)

I
POWERED THROUGH THE rest of that Saturday with an unusual, and yes,
excessive
display of energy, especially for sluggish me. Three loads of laundry, all ironing done immediately, a five-mile run, major grocery shopping that included enough fresh fruit and vegetables to stop any cancer cells in their tracks, and the beginnings of a tomato sauce simmering on the stove. At seven o’clock in the evening, I became quite ill from the smell of the tomato sauce, an odor that I normally found intoxicating. That was when I remembered I didn’t have a date for the evening ahead, and I plunged into despair. I wandered down to my basement study and checked my e-mail. Nothing from Rabbitfish. I swung around in my chair and tried to imagine what he was doing. The only possibility that seemed at all feasible was a fabulous night out with a hot blonde babe, age thirty-five, who spoke five languages
and
could have had a professional singing career if she’d wanted.

Unknowable, he’d said. Undoubtedly true.

Back up the stairs and in my living room, I sat down on the flowered chintz couch. The two front windows were open and the early evening spring air was surprisingly chilly. I felt so tired and dispirited that I knew I had to do something to cheer myself up. I laid a fire in the fireplace, struck a match, and lit it. Then I ran upstairs, opened the windows in the kitchen so that the tomato sauce smells wouldn’t be quite so overpowering, and made myself a Tom Collins. I settled into a corner of the living room couch, with a Mozart CD playing quietly, and the lights turned off. I gazed into the fire and began to give myself a talking-to. The kind that says, Buck up, Be grateful, Quit complaining, It could always be worse, Who needs sex anyway, You have your health.

Before I’d gotten very far, the phone rang.

Isaac said, “Rose, am I interrupting?”

I didn’t want him to know that I was sitting alone in my living room, drinking a Tom Collins. So I answered his question with a question. Always a good tactic. “How can I help you, Isaac?”

“If you weren’t busy tonight, I was wondering if I could come over. I need to talk to you.”

I swallowed. He sounded so damn serious, and this was the second time he’d asked to get together and talk. Obviously, something was up and I had this gruesome feeling that it might be serious. Maybe he was dying. How would I feel if I’d refused to listen to him when he really needed me at such a terrible moment in his life?

“I just built a fire and I’m having a drink. You can come by, if you want.”

“Thanks—I’ll be there in fifteen minutes.”

In the kitchen, I packed a crystal glass with ice and carried it back downstairs where a small cabinet held my collection of liquor. I took out the bottle of Scotch and placed it with the glass on a tray. Then I poked at the fire. I did not check my hair or make-up. The days when I wanted to impress Isaac were long gone. In fact, I prayed that my mood of depression had made me look unattractive. Maybe the same thing would be true of him, too. I opened the front door so that he could just walk in, then settled back on the couch.

Naturally I began to worry about what he was coming to talk to me about, but he arrived before I managed to get very far with the worrying.

I stood up and he kissed me on both cheeks. I pretended to do the same to him, but I was really just smooching the air around his face.

“Help yourself to a scotch.” I gestured to the tray.

“Great, thanks.”

I sat back down in my corner, and he took the opposite corner. Very cozy. The fire crackled and spit sparks.

“I have something to tell you that may come as a shock,” he said immediately.

“Are you sick?”

“Oh, god, no! I’m sorry you thought—”

“I didn’t
think
you were sick, it’s just that when someone sounds so serious and determined to talk, it can be worrisome.”

“It’s serious, but not bad.”

I found I was genuinely relieved. “Now I can enjoy my drink.” I took a hefty gulp.

Isaac matched my gulp with his own. “I’m making a big life change, and you’re one of the first people I wanted to tell.”

“Must be something in the water,” I said. “Seeing as how I quit the writing life.”

“I did wonder about both of us doing this at the same time.” He smiled, but gently, without much joy in it.

“Or maybe it’s the approach of the big five-oh.”

“The big five-oh?”

“Fifty years old!”

He shook his head. “Doubt that has anything to do with my situation.”

I cocked my head and swallowed more Tom Collins.

He sucked in his breath. “I’m just going to spit it out.”

“This better be good,” I said.

“I’m becoming a monk.”

I blinked at him, then glanced at the fire while I replayed the words in my mind. Finally, I said, “Uh, Isaac, you’re Jewish.”

He nodded. “Was.”

“You’re not Jewish anymore?”

“I’m a Buddhist now.”

“I think I’d feel better if you’d said you had a brain tumor.” After the words were out, I clapped both hands over my mouth, horrified.

“You’re awful,” Isaac said, pulling his face into a funny expression. “I know you don’t have much use for organized religion.”

“Or disorganized religion,” I said. “Or any kind of religion in any way, shape, or form.”

He nodded, but he didn’t seem troubled by what I was saying. I was
very
troubled. The smell of the tomato sauce seemed to cascade down the stairs and swirl into the room with us. I tried to get a handle on what Isaac had announced, first of all, but also on
why
he’d somehow felt it necessary to confide in me. His future was his future. He knew we were over, particularly if he was becoming a monk. Not much room for an ex-wife in a Buddhist monastery, for crying out loud.

“So I know this isn’t something that you care about, but at the same time, I feel you know me better than almost anyone. You may not understand or respect religion, but I think you do understand and respect
me
. What do you think of my plan?”

I stared at him. I’m afraid my mouth had dropped open a little bit. I was at a loss. “I can’t imagine what makes you say that I understand you. I don’t understand you at all. I never did.”

“But you’re the one who told me I was running from love by engaging in so much promiscuous sex.”

Frankly, I couldn’t remember having said that, but I was pleasantly surprised that he seemed to think I had. It sounded wise to me. Suddenly, I was wise.

Isaac continued, “And you’re the one who’s been celibate for two years, showing me the way.”

“You don’t know for a fact that I’ve been celibate!”

“It’s obvious.”

“Oh, great.” I drained the Tom Collins and got up to ferociously jab at the fire before throwing in two more logs and watching with satisfaction as they burst into flames. I whirled around and pointed the poker at him. “Whether or not I’ve been celibate is none of your business and whatever I’ve done has nothing to do with showing you the way!”

“I disagree. And I
do
agree that I was running from love by using sex. The really surprising thing is that I was running from
God’s
love when, if anything, I figured I was running from
your
love.”

“Isaac, you don’t
believe
in God. You told me so yourself, many times. Anyway, I thought Buddhism was anti-God.”

“I believe in God,” he said firmly, finishing the Scotch and standing up to head over to the cabinet, where he poured himself another.

“You won’t be drinking Scotch when you’re a monk.”

“That’s why I’m doing it now.” He grinned mischievously and for the first time that evening I saw the old devil dog, Isaac.

I shouted, “I’m not going to bed with you!”

“I have to admit it did occur to me, but I know it would be wrong. There are degrees of difference between sex and Scotch.”

“
Love
and Scotch.”

He looked confused. “Yeah, but weren’t we talking about sex?”

I shook my head. “The stuff for a Tom Collins is in the kitchen—I’ll be right back.”

I stirred the tomato sauce, added a little red wine, and left it simmering. It had started to smell good to me again. After I made the second Tom Collins, I went back downstairs. Isaac was stretched out on the couch, reminding me of Jenny earlier that day, when I’d arrived at her apartment. Briefly, I wondered how her date was going. I still had irrationally positive feelings about it.
Please, let her find happiness in love
.

Now, if you’d asked me to whom I’d directed that little prayer, I wouldn’t have anything logical to say, other than to explain that, when desperate, we human beings have a tendency to say and do dumb things. I meant well by asking, but I can’t say I believed I would be answered. Not a chance.

Meanwhile, it appeared that Isaac had actually fallen asleep. The nearly full glass of Scotch sat sweating on the coffee table. His hands were folded across his chest, like a dead person laid out in a coffin. I sat in an armchair close to the fire and sipped my drink. I studied him, up and down his body, trying to imagine him in the robes of a monk. Then I imagined going over and unzipping his fly. I zipped it back up again, pronto. Finally, in a moment of pure nuttiness, I began to laugh. I laughed so hard and long that I woke him up. He started to laugh with me.

He said, “When are you making the spaghetti? I’m getting hungry.”

“Monks don’t eat spaghetti, either.”

“You don’t know thing-one about what monks do.”

I sighed. “Okay, I’ll go make the pasta, but you have to do the salad.”

We spent a pleasant couple of hours, but even the nostalgic experience of having dinner alone together didn’t, in the end, create intimacy between us, for which I was surprised, but grateful.

After Isaac left, I curled up in the living room, nursing a cup of tea in front of the fire’s deep glowing coals. The good news was that I’d enjoyed talking with him about his crazy plans to become a Buddhist monk. I’d even told him that I thought he’d look handsome with a shaved head and orange robe, but that I doubted he’d survive very long without sex. He tried to convince me that the point was to do something you believed you were incapable of doing. I didn’t get the rationale for that, but I’d stopped disagreeing with Isaac years earlier, and even his reincarnation as a Buddhist monk couldn’t alter my resolve on that one.

I wanted to call Jenny, except it was only ten o’clock and I knew it was too early. Instead, I did what any sane single woman would do when she was alone on a Saturday night. I checked my e-mail. I had no real expectations, except, perhaps, something from one of my kids, sent in a fit of confused Mommy-love. I hadn’t heard from my youngest, Noah, in more than ten days, which was right on the edge of causing me worry, especially since he was the most gentle and sensitive of the three. He’d graduated from college the previous spring and was trying to become a literary writer, unlike the more commercial bent of his mother and older brother, Elliot. Trevor, his father, had agreed to partially support him for one year. His deadline loomed. That’s when it hit me: I hadn’t heard from him since I’d announced my decision to quit writing. Maybe I’d upset him in some way.

I sat down at the computer, already composing an e-mail to him in my mind, but first checking on what mail might have arrived for me.

Rabbitfish!

I gasped with surprise. On Saturday night? He was revealing his alone status on a Saturday night? I clicked so fast that for a second the e-mail seemed to disappear. I was afraid I’d actually deleted it, but then it exploded onto the screen.

Whatcha doing?

Those words moaned with sexual suggestion. To me, anyway, in my present celibate-induced coma state. I clicked Reply and began to type, my fingers flying. It took twenty minutes, even at a rip-roaring speed of 85 wpm. No braking, no turns, and my foot heavy on the accelerator. I wrote him all about my evening with Isaac. Everything. Then, with a careful proofreading but few revisions, I sent it to Rabbitfish. Or, actually, Mr. Rabbitfish, as I’d begun calling him in my mind.

In another fit of possibly excess energy, I wrote Noah a brief e-mail. I tried to keep it light by describing Isaac’s monkish plans, but I finally approached the subject of his own writing. Usually, I didn’t ask how it was going since I wasn’t sure whether he appreciated his mother’s,
who happened to be a writer
, curiosity. But, I figured, now I wasn’t a writer, so it would be all right. If I didn’t hear back from him within 48 hours, I’d call his house, which he shared with innumerable others, in the Adams Morgan section of Washington, D.C.

The phone rang, making me jump. For some reason, I thought it might be Mr. Rabbitfish, even though my number was unlisted, not to mention that it was ludicrous to imagine he’d actually call me when he hadn’t even given me his real name.

“Hi!” Jen’s voice was nearly unrecognizable. She often sounded happy, but never maniacally happy.

“That you?” I said.

“Yeah!”

“Are you drunk?”

“Of course not,” she said. “Don’t you want to hear about how it went?”

“You sound really, really
drunk.
”

She giggled. “Drunk with love, maybe.”

I stood up and sat down. Then I did it again, up and down. I’d never heard her like this. “
Tell
me.”

She started to talk, and she didn’t stop until an hour later. My right ear felt permanently folded and stapled against the side of my head. Apparently, after waiting forty-eight years, Jen had found her soul mate, that elusive dream of every woman. At various moments during her recital, tears filled my eyes and I had to blow my nose. I kept imagining the unknown Tom Callahan carrying her in his arms, down the aisle.

Thanks
, I mouthed to Isaac’s Buddhist-deity-entity-whatever. Had to thank someone. No one else came readily to mind.

F
IVE ODD HUMAN BEINGS gathered on Monday morning, in a sleazy unkempt room with a bar running along one wall. We each sat at a separate table, clutching our little notebooks. Here we were on the first day of first grade, except that we lacked that fresh dewey look of most first-graders, and instead of first grade this was a school to learn how to serve alcohol. Put that way, the sleazy room became uncomfortably suitable. There was something equally out of sync about each of us, myself included. I’m not sure why I’d felt compelled to wear an Austrian dirndl skirt, with matching puffy embroidered blouse. I think I was trying to recapture my lost innocence, but why did I think innocence was appropriate to a bar tending class? I’d even braided my hair and twisted it into a knot at the back of my neck. Thankfully, I hadn’t gone the two pigtails wrapped into packages over each ear route. I’d been convinced, when I checked in the mirror before leaving my house, that I was attractive.

And I
was
attractive compared to the other four. A very, very, very fat man with no hair and a bright red nose was clearly an alcoholic. The only other man appeared to be midstream into a sex change transformation. Unfortunately, I couldn’t tell which direction he, or she, was going. He wore exceptionally tight black jeans, a black muscle shirt, and his/her bleached blonde, shoulder-length hair swirled with frizz, like a ball of cotton candy. Someone needed to teach him/her about straightening devices, and I had the feeling I was elected. I knew I couldn’t stand looking at that hair for long. It made me itch.

The two other women were both in their twenties and they were obscenely thin, like a cartoonist’s pencil sketches, all fast line and bone. Their skin was dead white except for the slash of blush across each cheek. Both had dyed black hair. They were obviously buddies. Despite the similarities between them, they looked nothing alike. One, with a round face, was the follower and the other, whose face was as long as a hammer, the leader. I felt sure that hammer-face would somehow end up in prison and I just hoped round-face would wake up and cut the cord before she followed her friend. To that end, I picked up my notebook and moved to join them at their table. I gave round-face a big smile.

They glared.

Didn’t trouble me. One thing about being an older woman with plenty of experience was that I wasn’t easily spooked.

The teacher walked in. At first, actually, I thought he might be another student. He was probably about forty years old and beautiful. I glanced at the two other women and wasn’t surprised to see that they, too, were gaping at him.

He strode to the bar and in a long lovely fluid motion lifted himself backwards so that he was perched above us.

“Hey, everyone, I’m Al.”

Not a peep from his little chicks.

He grinned. I had the feeling he knew what kind of an effect he had on people. But, really,
of course
he knew. The man was a gift. First of all, his body was hunky and languid at the same time. Thin and elegant, but with wide endless shoulders and thick thighs that pressed against his jeans. His face looked like it had been carved from a tree, shaped into planes and angles that caught the light and framed a gigantic mouth, large well-shaped nose, and deep blue eyes. Tousled blond hair hung about with a determined carelessness. I kept thinking he’d been made, shaped, created. He was an actor, clearly, but good grief, couldn’t he get a better part than being a teacher for a bar tending course?

I said, “Hello.”

His eyes found me. I regretted having worn the Austrian dirndl skirt, but maybe we wouldn’t be standing up and moving around during the first class.

“Your name?”

“Rose Marley.”

He snapped his fingers and pointed. “You’re the novelist, right?”

Everyone’s head did a total swivel.

“Yes.”

“Welcome to the class.” Al looked around. “Let’s take a minute to introduce ourselves and maybe say a little something about why you’ve signed up for Bar Tending 101. Rose, how about you go first?”

The man made me shy. If I’d had pigtails, I’d be sucking the ends into little points.

“So, I’m Rose Marley. I’m taking a break from writing because, well, because I just think.” I stopped. For the life of me, I couldn’t remember why I was doing this. I dared to look at Al, who was broadcasting his magnificent smile of encouragement.

“I need to get out more,” I said.

The man/woman laughed out loud. “Know what you mean,” s/he said.

“You next,” Al said.

“I’m Jerusalem, but call me Jelly.”

Al said, “Jelly, I hope you won’t take this the wrong way, but I gotta ask—,”

Jelly interrupted, “Man to woman.”

“Cool, cool.” Al’s hands landed on his thighs and did a quick squeeze. Very sexy. “What’s your deal with bar tending?”

“Gotta make a living, thought it might work for me.”

“Next.” Al looked at the very, very, very fat man.

“My name’s Ike,” he whispered. “I figured this would be a good way to lose some weight, you know, because bartenders are always running up and down, plus I could meet nice people.”

Finally, my table mates.

“I’m Cathy, this is my friend Joan. We were working at a daycare center and just got so sick of it, all those whiny kids and dirty diapers and stuff, so we thought that women get good tips, you know, and this would be a lot of fun.”

Al actually stood up on top of the bar. He was towering over us as he said, “It’s going to be work, work, work. Most of you won’t make it to certification, I may as well tell you right now. That movie with Tom Cruise,
Cocktail
, gave a lot of people the wrong idea.” Al paced down the bar.

Cathy said, “Also the movie with the girls on top of the bar like you’re doing right now, where they dance and stuff.” Her face was animated and showed a faint resemblance to that of a human being instead of a hammer.

“Exactly.” Al strutted a bit.

My fantasy life for the next week, factoring in both Al and the mysterious stranger, Mr. Rabbitfish, was all set. I could hardly wait to go to bed that night. Maybe Mr. Rabbitfish would be hidden in a closet, for some reason I had yet to figure out, while Al … well …
Al
would be making love to me. I only vaguely paid attention as Al continued to lecture us about how hard it was to be a bartender.

“That’s
why
bartenders get good tips. They friggin’
earn ’em.
”

I looked at the others and noticed that Jelly was grinning and Ike looked like he was going to pass out. Cathy and Joan had regressed into a terror-stricken state. I felt a little
frisson
of concern. Maybe I wasn’t physically up to the task.

“You’ll have to memorize one hundred drink recipes, then you’re timed as you make the drinks. We have very rigorous time standards. If you don’t have the speed, you don’t get the certification.”

He jumped down from the bar and passed out thick pamphlets. “Test on drinks is tomorrow morning, covering the first 25.”

I turned the cover page and saw the first drink, called Angry Angel. I decided that I’d make myself an Angry Angel before I got into bed that night.

Al clapped his hands so that the sound echoed and made an explosive noise in the half-empty room. “Everyone up and behind the bar!” he screamed.

With scraping chairs, we pushed nervously away from our safe little tables. I was the first behind the bar, Miss Goody Two-Shoes in her dirndl skirt.

“Okay, spread out so that you’ve got at least two feet of your own space. We start with setting-up.”

Because I’d been first, I moved all the way down to the end of the bar, with a wall on my left and Jelly on my right. She shot me a quick smile.

I whispered, “I’m going to be so bad at this.”

Her adam’s apple bobbed as she swallowed. I couldn’t help wondering whether it would eventually shrink, or what. Since that thought made me feel guilty, I said, “I admire what you’re doing.”

“Thanks.” One thin white hand reached up and scratched at her scalp. Her hair was making both of us itch.

“Behind you on the counters is everything you’ll need for a pared down, essential setup,” Al said. “Open your pamphlets and follow the diagram on page three to find what you need and get yourself organized. I’ll be up and down to help out.”

I turned to page three. A hand-drawn diagram showed the particulars. For a moment, everything went blank and I thought I might be losing my mind. What was I doing in this disgusting room, with a bunch of weirdoes (not counting Al), on a Monday morning, following some cockamamie diagram of how to set up a bar when I could be sitting in a cafe with my laptop inventing witty dialogue for a couple of non-stressful hours? This becoming a bartender idea suddenly seemed stupid. Then I reminded myself that in one week I could have the certification and go out into the real world, get a real job, and be a real person.

The problem with being a novelist was that
nothing
was real. I was always making things up, and I had the feeling my imagination worked overtime, turning my whole life into one of my stories. Lots of drama, some high moments of joy, then the inevitable tragedy that’s the only thing to make Life, or the Story, meaningful. I just had to get real.

So I threw myself into it. My setup was the first to be finished. I waved to Al, signaling that I was ready to have it checked out.

Obviously, Al knew his bar setup inside out, so with a single sweeping glance, he could see I’d aced it. That’s what he said.

“Good job, Marley, you aced it.”

I hadn’t had anyone call me by my last name in quite some time, if ever. Still, it reminded me of how a book review always referred to the author by a last name. I was used to
being
Marley, but not
hearing
Marley. Which gave me an idea. I would start to call myself Marley when I went to get my first bar tending gig. Rose was too feminine and effete, anyway. Marley was the perfect name for a bartender.

Al arched an eyebrow at me. “I have a feeling you’re going to be good at this.”

I grinned. “I have a feeling you’re wrong.”

He threw back his head and laughed, then went to help Ike who was perplexed by the arrangement of cherries, olives and picks.

By the time we broke for lunch, I’d made three dozen martinis. Obviously, we didn’t use real liquor, although they somehow made the “vodka” have a thick, syrup quality so that we could fine-tune our pouring time. Water would come out a lot faster and our rhythm would be thrown off. The hardest part for the women, from my point of view, was reaching the bottles on the tall shelves behind us. Al said high heels were pretty much
de riquere
if you were under 5’5”.

Cathy of the hammer-face said, “And heels are sexy, too!”

“Definitely.” Al smiled at me, not her, as he agreed.

Holy shit
, I thought. Is that man coming onto me?

The whole class decided to go to the pizza parlor on the street-level below us for a quick lunch. Al was right behind me on my way down the stairs. He said, “Are you Austrian?”

I turned partially around. “Excuse me?”

He pulled up next to me on the stairs, which brought him very close. With his hand, he twitched at my skirt. “Are you Austrian?”

“Oh, no! I just wore it—” Since I knew the skirt looked awful, and I
in
the skirt, it became more and more inexplicable why I was wearing it.

“I wondered because I am.” Al picked up a bit of the skirt
again
and gave it a little tug. “Nice memories of my mother.”

Naturally, I thought, a mother-figure. That’s what happens when you get older. If a younger man does decide you are strangely attractive, surprising even himself, it’s always because you’re a mother-figure. Never again will I be a daughter-figure. Those days are kaput. The only thing I had left to look forward to was become a crone-figure. Should I be so blessed. On the other hand, better than nothing.

“Don’t get too excited,” I said. “Tomorrow I’ll be wearing a kilt.”

“That could be fun.”

We were almost to the bottom of the stairs. I took a chance. “Are you an actor?”

He dipped one shoulder modestly. “I go to auditions, that’s about it.”

“As a fellow artist, I do understand.”

Lunch with my bartender classmates started in complete silence. I fiddled with my straw, popping it in and out of the diet soda. trying to keep myself from orchestrating everyone into a discussion. Since I wasn’t shy
and
I was impatient, I tended to take control of social gatherings.

My daughter, Alex, had felt it necessary to conduct an intervention on this propensity of mine, right smack dab in the middle of last year’s Thanksgiving dinner. She’d enlisted everyone but me (the definition of an intervention, I know) and she started by touching her nose with her right forefinger. At that sign, every single person at the table stopped talking. At first, I figured they were just tired, then I thought someone must have gotten their feelings hurt, and finally, I could only assume the turkey had been poisoned with a substance that rendered a tongue immobile. Except,
my
tongue just kept babbling. I did everything I could until, ultimately, I burst into tears and sobbed into my linen napkin. The entire family then ganged up on me to inform me that I was too controlling in social situations. Too too.

Since then, I’d been understandably wary. The silence at our table stretched like a spider web. How could they stand it? Didn’t it make them nervous? Why didn’t
anyone
say
anything
?

Jelly finally opened her mouth. “I don’t think I’m going to be able to memorize 25 drinks by tomorrow.”

“Sure you can,” I bellowed, grateful to be allowed to speak and trying to buoy her confidence.

“You’re smart,” she said.

The others nodded.

“I am
not
smart, plus I’m old. It’s much harder to memorize when you’re old.”

Ike turned around and searched for the pizza.

Cathy said, “That’s true.”

Halfheartedly, Jelly added, “You’re not old.”

“We could meet early in the morning and test each other,” I said.