“We need to talk,” he mumbled. He stepped forward again. She held her ground. She didn’t want to be pushed into the bathroom.
“We need to talk,” he said again, and stepped forward again. She stepped back. They were in the bathroom. He turned and closed the door. He fumbled with the lock for a second, and then another second. He was standing there with his back to her in the small Ajax-smelling bathroom fumbling with the lock which didn’t work because in the thirty years his aunt had lived there she had never used it. At the last moment, as he began to feel utterly ridiculous, the lock clicked, and he turned to face her.
Her expression was now one of glowering anger. Her eyes were wide and hostile, but her mouth was a little open. It was open in a sort of shocked, surprised way, taken aback and confused. Her eyes scared him, but her mouth gave him strength.
“We have to talk about the situation with my aunt,” he said.
“We have to talk about it in the bathroom?”
“We have to talk about it in private.”
“What’s not private enough about the living room?” she said.
He stared at her uncertainly. Alex couldn’t believe what he was doing, but in Aunti B’s apartment none of the normal rules mattered.
“How much do we pay you a week?” he blurted out. He was sad about the “we.” He didn’t want Karl involved. But of course he was; he loomed over this scene with an approving smirk.
“What does that have to do with why we are standing here in the bathroom with the door locked?” she said.
He really wanted to say something about her son. It was just a sick thought. He wanted to say, “Don’t you have a son to support?” It was an inside joke, and part of him delighted in it as another part rose up in a kind of indignant fury that he might be such a bastard.
Instead he said, “We pay you well. You were making house-cleaning money and now you’re making nurse money. That’s about four times as much. Do you know why you’re making this kind of money?”
She remained still. He realized now that from the moment he had bumped into her in the door she had hardly moved, except to step back. Not a single movement in her face or hands.
“You’re making it because you are supposed to take care of my aunt—”
“I am taking care of her. I’m doing the best I can, I couldn’t be doing nothing more. You know she’s crazy. You know that.”
“I know that, Esmeralda, but I also know that we have to do everything we can to keep her happy.”
“But I’m—”
“No, listen to me. I have to do what I think is right with regard to my aunt’s care. And at the moment I am seriously considering what is right. Are you the right person? I don’t know.”
“Listen, if you’re going to fire me, then get it over with. I don’t need to stand here—”
“I didn’t say I was going to fire you. Did I say that? I said I wanted to talk to you. Why do you think we’re in here?”
“That’s a very good question,” she said. She was a little indignant now, hotter and madder than he had seen her. She had always seemed so docile, a slow mound of feminine flesh moving around the apartment.
“I want to help you,” he said pathetically.
“Help me? How are you going to help me?”
“Do you want to be fired?” he stammered.
“Listen, kid,” she said. She hesitated after this, as though calling him “kid” was a bit too much.
“No, you listen,” he said. “I’ve got a crazy aunt out there I’m responsible for. And though she may be crazy…listen, the point is this, the point is this…” he was sweating a little now. “The point is I like having you around here and would like to keep you around here. But if I don’t fire you, I’m the crazy one. The way she’s acting now…”
He stopped. She had gone back to her docile, quiet, and vaguely sweet incarnation. The cheerful housekeeper who was slow and had big tits. She was private again. That glimmer of anger and personality had gone away. He was confused. He wished he hadn’t locked the door. He wanted to flee. The only thing that prevented him at that moment was the prospect of having to fumble with the lock again. That and her breasts. In her mode of silence and passivity he became maniacally attracted to her. He wanted to touch her. His eyes fixated on her mouth, then her breasts, and before he realized what was happening he had stared intently at them for several full seconds, in utter silence, while she stared back at him. This wasn’t the smooth and suggestive and deliciously smarmy glance he had given her earlier, the raking-over, the up-and-down, the appraisal. This was just dumb staring, like a tourist standing dumbfounded in front of the small window boxes at Tiffany’s, staring at the beautiful gems he would never be able to own or even touch.
“What are you staring at?” she said. It was the inevitable reprimand.
He looked up at her bashfully, speechless. He felt a wave of patheticness sweep over him. It wasn’t the thought or even the act that was so pathetic, just the vague attempt, just enough to be busted, to be caught, and then no follow-through, the return to the real world empty-handed. He realized how far he had traveled to be in this little enclosed private space. Surely he would never get this far again. A renewed sense of urgency overcame him.
“What do you think I’m looking at?”
“I think you’re staring at my tits.” Her use of the word had an effect on him.
“That’s right. I’m staring at your big tits.”
“That why you locked the door? You want to do something with my tits? You think you’re gonna lock me in and threaten me with this stupid job?”
“You’re a very pretty lady. Do you know that?” He looked back at her eyes at last. “Very pretty lady. I would hate for you to leave.”
“Well, maybe I want to leave.”
“I’m not asking much.”
“What are you asking? What do you want? You want to play with my tits? And then what?”
The fact that she was now doing the work for him was a great relief. She had said the word herself, “tits,” and so the subject of sex had at least been articulated. She had even provided the word, in all its garishness—“tits”—the appropriate word for the situation. Neither subtle and romantic nor clinical, just matter-of-fact, an object, a kind of currency.
“Let me play with them.”
“Then what?”
“We’ll see.”
“No we’ll sees. I want to know.”
Again, she was helping him. She wasn’t telling him that this was out of the question. She was telling him that this was up for debate. There was some negotiating to be done.
“I want…I want to…” He couldn’t go further. His lack of imagination was amazing. He had approached the bathroom with a rather specific fantasy, but that fantasy was like some rare animal that could exist only at the untenable altitude of unreality, and if it was brought down into the thicker, life-giving air of the real world it would not only die, it would utterly disappear and vanish without a trace. They were in the real world, Esmeralda and he. His sick aunt was sleeping in the next room.
“What do I get?” she said. He wanted to call time out, stop the scene, and shake her hand, thanking her profusely for her help.
“I want you to stay. I like you here. I just want to…”
“Say it.”
He reached out and stroked one. It was firm and he could feel the weight of it. He could feel the heavy lining of her bra underneath the shirt. It seemed like a formidable piece of equipment.
“And that’s all?” she said.
“That’s all.”
She gave him a hateful look, which he enjoyed a lot. And then she put down the blue rubber gloves and the Ajax on the side of the sink. He hadn’t realized that this whole time she had been clutching them. Now her hands were free. He liked them, with their shiny apricot-colored nail polish, small and inelegant. Working hands. They found the bottom of the T-shirt and started to slowly pull it up. Her eyes stayed on his the whole time.
She pulled it up to her armpits and held the shirt there, as though at any moment she would pull it back down. Her elbows stuck up in the air. Her face softened ever so slightly, and he thought he detected an inquiring look in her eyes, as though she were saying, “What do you think?”
He was slightly revolted. It was too matter-of-fact. He didn’t know what drama he was concocting, but this was just too willful, and the bra, a big industrial-strength beige thing, was painfully redolent of real life. It was a little frayed, a little stained. Nevertheless he reached out and began to stroke her breasts. At first just the tops, the exposed part, and then he cupped them underneath, and lifted, wanting to feel their heft. The bra prevented this. Again her eyes modulated slightly, both a little proud and a little disdainful, as though to say, “Are you enjoying this?” and also “All this fuss over this, you idiot, was it worth it?”
“Take this off,” he said.
“No.”
“Take this off, I want them all, the whole thing.”
“No.”
“I want to see your tits, Esmeralda.”
“This is them.”
He pushed his finger underneath the bottom cup, underneath the heavy wire. For a moment he thought he felt a rib, and it upset him, this digging into her flesh.
He lifted the cups up, and she inhaled as though she were at a doctor’s examination, and out spilled her large bountiful brownish breasts. The nipples he had so speculated and fantasized about came into view. They were lewd, her nipples, in their expanse, their screaming presence, their darkness. They quickly puckered a little in the open air. He held her breasts from underneath. They spilled sloppily over his hands. He brought his face towards them.
“Oh Jesus,” she said.
“That’s right,” he murmured for some reason.
“Jesus Christ,” she said. He stood back up and started pinching her nipples lightly, pulling them out a little so her breasts shook. His eyes went from her breasts to her eyes, back and forth. Her expression was cold now. “So you are doing this, but it doesn’t mean anything,” it said. She still held her T-shirt up for him, her elbows stuck out in the air. He started kneading her breasts, squeezing, stupid hand-splayed squeezes.
“More,” he said.
“No more,” she said. She brought her hands down. The T-shirt fell. His hands were not removed. They were under the shirt. She reached for her bra to pull it down, but he continued to squeeze and touch.
“More,” he said, and pushed her back toward the toilet. “I want you to do something for me.”
“What?”
“Sit.”
He reached behind her and put the toilet seat and lid down.
“You want that too? You didn’t say that. You’re a liar,” she said in a steely voice.
“Suck me.”
She glared at him, sat down, her hands on her lap. He unzipped his pants and an erection sprang forward like a reptile. It stuck out at her, pink and brazen. He was at a loss as to what to do next. All facilities for speech, and even thought, were more or less down and out. And he needed her help.
“Show me,” he said.
“Show you what?”
His erection diminished in the next heartbeat, and in its diminishing, it pulsed, like a diving board someone had just jumped off.
She smiled a derisive sneering smile. “You got a pretty one, though.”
“Put it in your mouth.”
“Oh, a tough guy. Little cousin, the tough guy.”
“Please?”
“Please! Oh, you ask nice. What a good little boy.”
She stuck her tongue out, as if she were going to take a lick, brought it right near the tip, and then narrowed it and stuck it up at his face like a schoolgirl. Mocking.
He reached down to her plentiful hair, full and curly. His hand burrowed deep in it, held her tight, and pulled her towards him.
“Uh oh!” she said. How this had all become a big joke he didn’t know. “Tough guy! Here he comes!”
Then he heard the sound of the bedroom door opening, followed by the distinct shuffling sound of his aunt walking, that heartbeat shuffle step, her bad leg dragging a little. She took in the empty room. Then the phrase, unmistakable, comic: “Vas is dat?”
Emphasis on the “dat,” connoting curiosity, surprise, though not yet alarm. She was looking out at the living room and, for the first time in months, finding herself alone.
His heart jumped, his brain traveled at lightning speed from his penis to his head, and, finding itself there for the first time in fifteen minutes, it was amazed at the horrible damage it found, the absurd wreckage of its dignity and sense of self. Why was the housekeeper sitting on the toilet?
He heard more scraping of the leg, the little banging of the cane, the cadence of that limp, and then his name: “Alex? Alex?”
Esmeralda gave him a big smile. “Tough guy!” she said. “What happens now?” And she laughed a horrible shrieking laugh while she adjusted her bra and stood up. From beyond the door he heard the scraping stop and the sudden stillness of his aunt standing alone in her own house, aware of something else alive and near her, like an animal in the forest who senses some danger, but doesn’t know from which direction it comes.
GRADUALLY THE EMPTY cardboard boxes filled up with possessions. Karl packed up her pots, pans, clothes, and silverware.
The books were a different story. Alex went through them with her one by one. Some were in German, others in English.
“What do you think of Kafka?” he asked, holding up The Trial.
“Kafka?”
She shrugged her shoulders and narrowed her eyes in a vague imitation of someone about to humbly express some talmudic wisdom.
“Kafka,” she said. “Kafka is Kafka.”
He thought it was a pretty good answer.
“WHAT THEY DID to him! What they did to him!” His Aunti B was screaming and weeping in the middle of the living room, a moist dot of humanity set on the expanse of her awful orange rug, holding a photograph in her hand. Alex stood helplessly before her.
Esmeralda poked her head in from the kitchen and shrugged. She looked at him with eyes that suggested both that she somehow was willing to forgive him and that he shouldn’t even think of trying it again.
“Who is that man?” he said. There was the young man in the picture, her young intellectual with the pens in his breast pocket. He thought of the doctor’s question about concentration camps. “Who was he? Who were they?”
It was all gone now. The treasure of his aunt’s biography had disappeared, and yet the person still stood before him with tears in her eyes.
THE DATE WAS set. During the last week before the move he slept over several times. He had broken up with Debbie, remorsefully, but with a sense of relief. He went from sleeping over at his girlfriend’s to sleeping over at his aunt’s. He slept on the couch. Aunti B kept impossible hours. In his sleep he heard her shuffling around the apartment. In some odd way it comforted him, knowing that she was still there.
Once she prodded him gently with her hand in the middle of the night. Very gently. His eyes cracked open. She was a dim figure in the dark. He could see her outline, that bent posture. She prodded him again, more like a pat, as if she were plumping pillows.
“What’s that?” she said.
“It’s me, Aunti B,” he said.
“Me?” she said. And started laughing. It was weirdly sweet. But she was out of her mind.
“I think it’s a cat,” she said.
THE DAY BEFORE her departure all that was left on the bare living-room bookshelf was the picture of his father. It was the last thing to be packed. Since Karl had done all the packing, Alex thought it was curious that it was still out. Was it for her benefit? For his? It didn’t occur to Alex that Karl had left the picture out for himself. That Karl himself stared lovingly at it, and grieved for his uncle, whom he had known twice as long as Alex.
In the picture, the face was in semiprofile, his father’s eyes look
ing away.
Alex tried to position himself in the corner of the room, where he thought his father was looking. He slid over as far as he could go, trying to get in range of his father’s gaze, but those eyes evaded him. Aunti B watched him, amused, and blurted out a few words in German. The one word he recognized was Meschugge.
The next day he and Karl escorted her through the lobby, a royal ceremony which seemed to amuse her until she saw the huge white stretch limousine that sat improbably at the curb, Karl’s last irrational extravagance.
“Well, Aunti B!” Karl exclaimed. “Whaddaya think?”
Even now at the last possible moment Alex struggled with his ambivalence towards Karl. Who needs a white stretch limo to take his tiny aunt to a nursing home? But he made himself forgive Karl, even appreciate him, and even experience, beneath the muffling layers of confusion, a glimmer of love. Leaving home forever is something you only do once. Take a white limo. Why not?
When at last she got in, the last thing he saw of her was her lame leg still hanging down from the door. She struggled to pull it up into the car with the rest of her. That exposed leg with the special shoe. It was a chilling sight.
When the limo turned the corner, Alex went upstairs to his new apartment. He took a deep breath and closed his eyes. The place smelled exactly as he remembered it from when he first walked in as a child. He couldn’t imagine the smell ever going away. A boy’s shriek arrived through the window, and then it was quiet again. Very quiet. He could hear his heart beating, he could feel it, and with a shiver it struck him that it was the exact same cadence as her halting step.
Say It with Furs
WHEN THE BUZZER RANG, CHRISTINE WAS IN HER PAJAMAS, leaning against the kitchen sink, sipping tea, and indulging in a careful reconstruction of the Gum Incident. The buzzer made her jump. She had been in deep space, staring at the small wooden night table that had sat for years next to her bed, supporting an infinitely long procession of Kleenex boxes and also a highly impractical lamp that was supposed to look like an old candelabra, and whose three candle-shaped lightbulbs—each supported by a candlestick with fake wax artfully dripping down the side—produced just barely enough light by which to read. She kept the candelabra on her night table because it sometimes made her feel as though she were living in an old windswept mansion filled with ghosts. Other times it made her feel as though she were living in a tiny studio apartment decorated with stuff from the Sixth Avenue flea market.
The Sleep-Over Artist Page 12
