Another You Page 11

  Cheryl was on the second-floor landing, sitting in a lawn chair, as if she were sunning herself at the beach. Instead of a bathing suit, though, she wore a sweaterdress. “Thanks for coming, Marshall,” she said, “but I’m here to head you off. This is pretty unbelievable, but she’s got a boyfriend from Chicago who just came into town. I don’t know why she couldn’t have told us she was engaged, but half an hour ago we found out he existed, then that he was coming, and believe it or not, he’s in there now and they’ve called out for pizza.”

  What a confusing, pointless night. And how stupid that he was standing halfway up the stairs in Cheryl Lanier’s apartment, holding cookies and Cokes. Though what the hell? What the hell, really. Banished from her apartment to the chilly hallway, the other roommate … where was the other roommate?… the situation being what it was, maybe he should just sit on the landing, open a Coke, take a breather before turning around and going home. As if she’d read his mind about the missing roommate, she said, “Timothy thought he’d better go back to the library. I thought I’d sit here and wait for you and apologize. She’s in there all cheered up, and suddenly it’s like I’m the problem, like I was overreacting all the time she was crying and waking me up at night screaming with nightmares. I mean, Timothy was sort of upset, because she’d been crying on his shoulder all day, and now he thinks she’s been using us. That she overreacted. But I mean, McCallum did those things. He’s a sick man.” She looked inside, then looked back at him. “I don’t know what’s going on anymore.”

  “Coke?” he said.

  “Oreo.” She smiled.

  The absurdity of getting involved in young people’s problems. All this drama over what was probably nothing, while a responsible husband would have been at his wife’s side as she sat in the hospital with his dying stepmother, but instead he was having a little late-night party on the dimly lit landing of an apartment house, sitting on the dusty floor atop a flight of stairs like a servant at the beck and call of the Queen, who happened to be sitting not on a throne, but in a lawn chair. He barely knew Cheryl Lanier. She was the one who had the crush on him. She was the one who had mentioned a “date,” taken his hand in the car, tried to involve him in something. As he sat on the landing, the rushing around of the past hour making him feel suddenly more defeated than truly tired, the door creaked open behind Cheryl.

  “That the pizza?” a man’s voice said.

  “No. I’m here with a friend of mine,” Cheryl said. She sounded more defeated than Marshall. She said it with the matter-of-factness of someone saying, I give up.

  “You can come in, you know. I don’t know why you won’t stay in the apartment with us.” It was a girl’s voice; Livan’s voice.

  “Aren’t the pizzas free if they don’t get here in half an hour?” the man said. Still, there was only the cracked door, a pale zipper of light. It was clear that Cheryl didn’t mean to answer the question. Nor did she have to, because a few seconds later, while the door was still ajar, a car pulled up and a delivery boy got out, racing into the apartment with the pizza in an insulated silver bag, taking the steps two at a time.

  “Twenty-seven minutes,” the man said, opening the door. He was a man, not a boy: thirty or so, Marshall guessed—short, bad skin, wearing aviator glasses and a fisherman’s sweater that sagged low over his jeans. Clearly none of it looked strange to the deliveryman, who decided to hand the box to Cheryl, though it was the man who reached into his pocket and took out folded dollar bills, counting the money twice and telling him to keep the change. Who could imagine what the deliveryman saw every night? To him, they were just a bunch of perfectly normal people standing around waiting for food. What would it even matter that one was a professor, another a student, and that the pock-marked man had just arrived from Chicago? Marshall watched him disappear, taking the steps three at a time, staring after him until he heard the front door bang shut.

  Beside the man now holding the pizza box—the man who looked through Marshall with complete indifference, as if he didn’t exist; no greeting, nothing—beside the man rolling his eyes comically, as if enjoying a little joke with himself as he held the box to his nose and inhaled the pizza’s aroma, stood a girl, a tall girl, about five-foot-ten, her eyes swollen from crying, her hair dishevelled, a clump gathered back in a ponytail, the rest tangling free. She was wearing sweatpants, an orange pullover sweater, and fuzzy slippers made to look like rabbits. Unlike her friend, who had turned and gone back into the apartment, she looked at him, then at Cheryl, with what he could only think was disdain, as if they were squatters camping in the hall. She stood before them, a girl looking with empty eyes at her roommate and then—too much appraisal creeping in for her look to be described as dispassionate—looking once again at the stranger who sat at Cheryl’s feet. He could see himself through her eyes: a teacher, a man who now, by definition, was to be distrusted; perhaps he was also a fool for rushing over, or at the very least ineffectual. It was the last thing he would have expected: that he would dislike Livan, feel no sympathy for her. For a while, he had intended to be judicious—hadn’t that been his plan, such as it was?—to feel her out, see if she was convincing as she talked about McCallum, and then, assuming she was convincing, to begin to persuade her that she must get help. Apparently, help had been a phone call away, all along. And he and Cheryl, neither of them in that moment feeling anything but exploited, were behaving, by their silence and with their dropped eyes, as if she had a right to judge them. His sympathy was for Cheryl—Cheryl, out on the landing—and for himself: no dinner; a tiring ruined evening, his valuable time wasted because he’d convinced himself he must go on a mercy mission.

  “Get your coat and we’ll get out of here,” he said to Cheryl.

  “Thanks,” she said, “but you’ve done enough.”

  “Let’s go,” he said, standing. He had tried that line with Sonja so many times during Evie’s hospitalization, but all she’d agree to do was to step out of Evie’s room while they worked on her. He couldn’t do anything for Evie, but maybe he could do something for Cheryl Lanier. “Don’t blame yourself,” he said. “Come on. Let’s go.”

  “She’s got a student loan they’re not renewing unless she gets her grades up. Maybe that’s all she’s really upset about,” Cheryl said.

  “I spoke to McCallum on the phone tonight,” he said. “Apparently he’s got something to feel guilty about.” He remembered the sound of something crashing in the background, heard McCallum’s voice asking, “Do I want to be dead?”

  “I’ve got a friend I can stay with in Dover,” she said. “Would you mind giving me a ride?”

  “Sure,” he said. “I’ll drop you in Dover.”

  She folded the chair and leaned it against the wall. Now, from inside the apartment, he could smell the marijuana Cheryl had talked about, hear muffled laughter above the rock and roll.

  “I spent a lot of time sitting in stairwells when I was growing up, when my father started in on my mother. He never hit her, but he’d scream like one of those people they pay to start things shaking at rock concerts. You know, one of the foxes.” She tried again: “A plant.”

  “You mean that isn’t just unbridled enthusiasm?”

  “Sometimes, sure. But they pay people, too. They did when the Beatles first came to the United States. Did you know that?”

  “Did the Beatles know it?” he said.

  She shrugged. “What do you think: they were such upstanding lads they would have objected?”

  “You assume I’m inextricable from my generation? That naturally I’d have great reverence for the Beatles?”

  They were on the verge of really arguing, to his surprise. It must be that they needed to blow off steam, both of them feeling used, both feeling foolish, but left for the moment with only each other.

  In the downstairs hallway she reached in among the coats and pulled her down jacket off a peg; underneath the jacket hung the scarf he’d insisted she take in the car, which surprised him for a s
econd because he’d forgotten he’d given it to her. Instead of wearing it, though, she straightened it on the peg, then zipped her jacket, still without speaking. What did this mean? That they’d had an argument and that now she was renouncing him by renouncing his gift?

  “I’m sorry for dragging you into this,” she said coolly, sitting primly in the car.

  “Well, my stepmother is in the hospital. It gave me something to think about other than that,” he said. If she was going to tell him about her family, he’d tell her something about his.

  “Is it serious?” she said, after a pause.

  “She had a stroke. The third one. At first they thought it was a seizure, but it turns out it was another stroke.”

  “I’m sorry,” she said.

  At the intersection, he headed toward Dover. He asked if she wanted him to stop so she could call her friends before they got there. “No. That’s something people from your generation do,” she said. It worked, too; until he whirled around to look at her and saw her sly smile, he had taken her seriously, aghast at how cryptic she’d suddenly become.

  “Don’t worry. I’m not your worst fear,” she said. “I’m not mean, and I’m not down on older men. If they’re attractive.”

  “Cheryl,” he said, “I admit that flirting is more interesting than arguing, but let’s drop it, okay? Think about this from my perspective: I’ve just been trying to do the right thing. I guess by now it’s clear that in some way, we’ve both been had.”

  “We’re a great team,” she said.

  “We’re not a team,” he said. “I have a wife.”

  She looked at him. “Would you be more comfortable if I got out and walked?”

  “You’re the one who’s been trying to provoke me,” he said.

  “Does that make me your worst fear? A woman who’s provocative?”

  “Worst fear? What are you talking about? That’s like a question on a psychological exam: ‘Often I feel that other people are …’; ‘My worst fear is that.…’ ”

  “Often I feel that other people are going to succeed, and I’m not,” Cheryl said. “My worst fear is that for reasons I don’t understand, I’m trying to antagonize someone I want to be my friend.”

  Think of something to say; she’s opened up to you, he kept thinking, all the way through the town, past the empty factory buildings, past used-book stores and out-of-business boutiques, up the dirt road she directed him to, thinking it still as he coasted to a stop outside a large clapboard house bordered by a second-growth pine forest. Say something, he told himself as she opened the car door, but urgency only paralyzed him further. If he hadn’t reached over and grabbed her jacket and pulled her back and pressed his forehead against hers, closing his eyes, inhaling the smell of her shampoo, his lips parting slightly against her cheek, his lips trailing down to kiss her lips, she would simply have gotten out of the car and disappeared into the house in silence.

  Martine, Martine, Martine, Martine—

  How often in the two days since we last spoke has your name echoed in my mind, as if by incantation I could conjure up your strong spirit and derive strength from it. I have been almost unable to look anyone in the eye since Alice’s admission to the hospital in Connecticut. They are not so much polite as exceedingly businesslike: every time I admit to my stupidity, they tell me there will be plenty of time to discuss it later, treating me like a child being told to play inside on a rainy day, because the next day is sure to be sunny. They’re very skeptical—with reason, I suppose—of a man whose wife is addicted to drugs and alcohol and who claims to have noticed nothing out of the ordinary. Well, Martine, what has been “ordinary” about Alice since M’s death? And if this might have been the situation when he was alive, did you have the slightest indication this was so? How amazing I didn’t ask you that when I phoned, and how equally amazing that I am ashamed to call again, half because I suspect you, also, must think me a fool, and half because if you do not, and pity me, I would be undone. I know the truth is that you were so horrified by the facts I laid out that you never recovered yourself during my call. Also, I was in the administrative office when I called—just a few big antique tables with typewriters and vases of flowers on them, in the Greek Revival building that is on the hospital grounds—and there was nowhere to sit, the recorded Vivaldi was maddening, a doctor came in and began to argue with an insurance company representative—it wouldn’t seem that in such a moment of crisis I could be so distracted, but I find I hardly remember what I said to you, and what you said to me I remember almost not at all. I felt I knew nothing of the world and that I never have, standing in a room that looked exactly like a room in someone’s private home, yet this was a hospital, my wife was in another similarly antique studded building across a vast Gatsbyesque lawn, and I was expected to sign forms agreeing to pay them any amount they demanded and disappear without seeing her again and to return only after several days had passed, believing that it would take that long to detoxify her body from an assortment of drugs, most of which I had never heard of, that she had presumably washed down with various liquors ingested right under my nose? Fortunately, I was able to reach Dr. St. Vance at once, so at least his overseeing of the situation will begin immediately. Once in the office, I simply ignored the young doctor and managed several calls before the noise level got so loud I gave up. I realize that the welfare of spouses is secondary at such a time, but I find it astonishing that no thought is given to the shock we may be experiencing. On my way out, one of the women sitting at a desk asked if I wished to buy a raffle ticket! It did not instill confidence about the hospital, which Amelia tells me is very fine, and which Dr. St. Vance also seemed to feel would be a good enough place for Alice to be at present. But still, Martine: no one wants to think about winning a bicycle when their wife has been found passed out. It was so annoying as to drive me almost mad.

  I am in Amelia’s apartment now, waiting for her to return from work so I can talk to someone friendly and understanding, instead of someone who wants me to sign away all rights to my money and/or buy a raffle ticket. I cannot at this moment stand to go back to the hotel room after the shock of entering it and finding Alice passed out on the bed, the sickening stench of vomit in the air. As coincidence would have it, kind Amelia had phoned the hotel and left a message for me, begging me to find time in the evening to see her and to tell her about Alice, so here I am—let in by her landlord—sitting in her apartment, which I find I have so often imagined, and imagined wrong. It is rather dilapidated, and any movement seems to result in more paint flaking from the walls. Alice always spoke of her fondness for the place by calling it a good place to nest, though I, myself, feel it’s more like the scrap from which a nest could be assembled. I find it difficult to imagine you, so tidy and so given to beautiful arrangements, spending time here without damage to the spirit. I am thinking of the time you occupied this apartment when Alice and I went to Key Largo the fall after M’s death.

  I know what is going to happen now. The baby’s death is going to be the starting point for every diagnosis, every possible solution, every recommendation about how Alice and I should live our lives. The thing I have tried so hard to put out of mind is going to be paraded out like an enormous float at Mardi Gras, all the doctors and nurses reaching up their cups for coins. M’s death and Alice’s sad state are going to be paraded by me time and again, and I will no doubt be expected to explain what truths lie beneath the masks. It seems quite excessive punishment for something I did that was not so sinful, really. At least, since we do not speak of it, I assume you don’t think my actions were a sin, or that if they were, you have implicitly forgiven me. That’s why I was so glad you came, and even happier that you stayed.

  Ever,

  M.

  8

  SONJA OPENED THE DOOR as Marshall was still fumbling with his key, and he sensed immediately that something was different. Perhaps she smiled slightly more than she would have ordinarily; perhaps she was just a touch too formal
in the way she stood before him, as if whoever was behind her might have the ability to stare through the back of her head and see her expression from the front.

  Sonja was in her gold sweater, but it was not worn over the black thermal underwear she was so fond of lounging around in. The camouflage boots were gone, and she was wearing white wool socks with her ballet flats. He stared at her in the brief information-gathering moment available to him before he would have to go into the house, looking for a clue. There was none, but none was needed: immediately upon entering he saw McCallum, sitting in a chair by the fire and—incredibly!—McCallum did not rise, but raised his arm and gave him the by-now-familiar two-fingered wave acknowledging that Marshall had just walked into his own house.

  “Apparently you’ve both had quite an evening,” Sonja said wryly, as she hugged him, her body not slackening at all as it touched his: formal Sonja, entertaining company.

  “My apologies,” McCallum said. “My apologies for having ruined so many people’s lives, though I hope I haven’t dragged you into this thing too far, Marshall.”