All This Could Be Yours

by Jami Attenberg

  * * *

  Barbra had grown up dreaming of a man who would take care of her, give her all the things she desired. Love would be fine, too, but she had learned to provide herself the comfort she needed.

  When I met Victor, I would have been anyone he wanted, she thought. Just to get what I wanted.

  But she only had to be herself when they first met, when visiting the shiva house for her cousin Josef in Swampscott, a rich man by then, richer than when she was a child, and then he was dead. Victor was the son of a business acquaintance, taking an extension class at Harvard Business School for the semester. Making connections, she supposed. Bright and not handsome, but tall and manly, with a cruel and sexy smile. Lips like ribbons. He was aggressive, and he wasn’t particularly pleasant; he shook hands grimly, firmly; he worked the room with discomfort, but there was no arguing here: he was working the room. But she held her own. For she knew she was the grand prize.

  There she was with her spacious lips and huge eyes, which, in their enormity, always looked on the verge of pleasure or surprise, so that one always felt vaguely thrilled to be around her. And she was petite and tidy and well mannered, and it was not her fault if she came from no money. She would figure out a way to get it. She worked hard and situated herself to meet the right people. Men had admired her since she was a child. How many doors had been held open for her, a man rushing ahead to capture her gratitude? How many times had her tiny hand been kissed in appreciation of her existence? How many flowers had been bought for her? How many steak dinners? Many.

  She had stayed single longer than she supposed she would. This had altered her slightly. Once, briefly, in college she had been engaged. Bernie was an English major, a future teacher, hearty, big-chested, smiling. He wrote her poetry, which would buy her nothing. She was charmed by him anyway. He called her Kitty. A pet name. She was his pet. A thing men did, tried to turn her into something to be stroked. Bernie’s family had a place in Maine, and he took her with him one summer. His mother was overly interested in her, she thought, and asked a thousand questions about her family, her people, which made Barbra uncomfortable, what with her father drifting in and out of her life. It was embarrassing. Bernie’s grandmother was staying there that summer, too; she had the entire first floor of the house to herself, and she was dying, and no one would admit it. Barbra was astonished by the way they all kept smiling at this ninety-year-old woman hacking up a lung every morning after breakfast. Their coordinated presentation of denial was truly inspiring. So she admired Bernie and his family, but also was mortified by them; it was a true hell.

  Bernie’s mother insisted on walks with her in the morning, as the sun rose, around the small lake named for a Native American tribe from whom the land had been taken, a story that was told to her by Bernie’s mother without remorse, because, after all, it had happened well before any of them had been alive. It couldn’t have been their fault.

  “This poor tribe. They didn’t know what hit them. It was a terrible slaughter,” said Bernie’s mother, their arms linked. “So, tell me about your father.”

  Stop asking so many questions, thought Barbra. She didn’t want to explain who she was to anyone. She would prefer to remain a beautiful mystery, her soul lingering forever in a shimmering haze. Her truth was for no one but herself. Bernie asked her to marry him that summer, after the fireworks display on the Fourth of July. He would start teaching in the fall, and she would work as a secretary at the college, and his parents would help them get a starter house in Somerville, and they could come to Maine every summer, and someday, after they were married and his grandmother had died, they could have the whole first floor of the house to themselves, thus erasing any memory of illness and death. She did not say no because she could not say no, and then there were so many engagement presents, and things stretched on another three months until Bernie’s mother insisted on meeting her parents, and suddenly Barbra didn’t love Bernie anymore, and somehow she never found the time to return the presents.

  The men came for her after that, this was how she felt. There was something in her essence now; she was the rejecter. She allowed them to show her their ardor. Always with limitations; she’d had lovers before, but now she withheld all desires; she slept with no one. And in that way, she began to think of herself as the grand prize, and she carried herself as such, with grace and a surprising new poise, and the knowledge she could not be taken or acquired or owned, unless it was her choice, for she was the chooser, she was the one. Step right up, don’t be shy, see if you’ve got what it takes to win.

  She had nearly learned to love the aloneness.

  She was clearing dishes when she met Victor, being of assistance. She didn’t cook, she barely cleaned—her mother had done all of that—but she had learned one trick, and that was to help clear the table. The pretense of looking helpful in a stranger’s home. She never actually washed the dishes. “Where should I put these?” she’d say sweetly. And then that’s what she’d do. She’d put them wherever the poor sap who happened to be standing at the sink told her to put them, and then she’d walk away. Outside the kitchen she appeared to be bustling, while inside the kitchen someone else did the hard work. She was destined to have help—wouldn’t someone recognize that already?

  Victor brought in a plate and handed it to her, and smiled a magnanimous smile, proud of himself, she thought, for bringing in one lone plate. He also understood the pretense of helping, she thought. He was well dressed, a bespoke suit, and he wore a class ring on his finger. He continued to smile at her, and she studied him: he seemed to be simultaneously in pain and in complete control of it. She was later to find out that this was actually just sustained anger.

  “You look like you’re in charge here,” he said.

  “Absolutely not,” she said.

  He wasn’t related to her, she was relieved to discover. He was the son of one of Josef’s business acquaintances by way of New Jersey, and now Boston. That meant they knew things about each other immediately. Her cousin was a generous person, good enough to be mourned, treasured in his world, but he was also a criminal and an associate of many other criminals, and she had come from a line of people who handed things off to each other through networks, often under cover of night. She had seen her father fail in his attempts at legitimacy. America seemed to be made for those who did things their own way. This cousin helped everyone around him; it was just that he helped himself, too.

  So he knew she came from a family of criminals, though she stood before him passing as good and solid and as American as could be. A dainty figure, well behaved, wiping her hands on a tea towel. Here to help. And what she knew about him, this business associate with his Harvard classes, was that he was dangerous as hell and headed up, away, and fast. She felt such a thrill in her body that she nearly collapsed from it. When they finally introduced themselves to each other in the living room, her hand shook in his.

  “Are you OK, Barbra?” he said.

  “I’m just cold is all,” she said.

  He leaned down—he was nearly a foot taller than her—and took both her hands in his and rubbed them and then blew his thick, warm breath on her girlish, soft fingers.

  “Your eyes are gorgeous,” he said. “Just absolutely riveting.”

  She nodded. This she’d heard before, since she was a little girl. They were unnaturally large and bulged slightly, but with eye makeup she had learned to make herself look uncannily glamorous. “I hope that’s not an inappropriate thing for me to say, sweetheart.” He leaned in close to her face and lowered his voice; not a whisper, but still a secret. “I’m just being friendly. Don’t worry, I wouldn’t make a pass at you at a shiva house.” But of course that’s what he was doing. He probably hit on women every shot he got. She was special, but so were a lot of other people. Another playboy, she thought. Well, playboy, that’s enough of that.

  Speaking of enough of that: her father tottered into the room, boozed up, naturally. Off-kilter gait, eyes stained yellow
. That Mordechai would live another twenty-five years after this day never ceased to astonish her. That he would continue to show up unwanted, around death, that part was not a surprise. Let me have that one thing from him, she thought. Let me inherit his unstoppability.

  He crashed into a potted plant and then kept walking, straight to the bar.

  She and Victor, along with everyone else at the shiva house, watched Mordechai’s performance. No point in denying it, not in this room, with the closed curtains and the sound of chewing and the body odor and all the immigrant faces and the new money and the same faded furniture that had been in the house for at least a decade, out of style, of another era entirely, purchased and then forgotten, life went on around it, while it faded in the sunlight and acquired chips and nicks and other signs of age. The furniture remained the same because Josef hadn’t had to sell his living room furniture out from beneath his family, but he still refused to spend a dime because he was hiding all his money from the feds. The furniture remained the same, and everyone who lived here knew what home felt like.

  “My father, ladies and gentlemen,” she said to Victor. “He’s a drunk. Obviously.” She couldn’t bring herself to look at him. She kept her tone smooth, though. “We all like to drink,” she said. In fact, she liked to drink quite a bit at that time in her life. The men bought her martinis. “But he takes it too far, you know? Like he can’t show up here for an hour not stinking of it? It’s three in the afternoon.” Cocktail now in hand, her father tripped over a lamp cord, brushing against two suited men in kippahs who caught him, then righted him, finally helping him to sit on a couch. There he shook and grinned. “I’m all right, I’m fine,” he said. Then he closed his eyes. Soon enough, he was asleep. What a role model, she thought.

  “Do you want me to fix this?” Victor asked.

  “Do you mean murder him? Sure.”

  Victor burst out in cruel, delighted laughter.

  “I could ask him to leave if you want.”

  “What’s the point of making a scene?” she said. “I prefer grace in all situations.”

  “OK. I could ask you to leave if you want. Meaning, I could take you somewhere good.” Something was cooking between them, she could feel some real heat rising. Her chest beat. “What do you think,” he said. “Did you mourn enough for the day?”

  They drove to Revere Beach and got fried clams from Kelly’s and walked down near the water. It was spring, and a weekday, so the beach was nearly empty. She took her shoes off. He was awkward in his suit. “I’m a little overdressed,” he said. He flipped his suit coat over his shoulder. She fed him a clam. A cloudless sky. She squinted from the sun, and he moved his hand to block her face from it. His hand was nearly as big as her head, and she wasn’t threatened by it then, but she would be for almost the entirety of their marriage. Right then, though, she was touched by the gentleness of the gesture, hadn’t known she would need any gentleness that day. Of course, after they were married, he told her he didn’t like the way her face looked when she squinted, and she tried hard for a number of years never to do so in his presence, until eventually she realized he didn’t much notice her looks anymore. Squint away, Barbra, she thought, but by then she had relegated herself to a life of sunglasses anyway. To prevent further damage to her skin.

  * * *

  That story you already knew, Alex. We told you that one a few times. We met after a funeral, and then your father would say, “Death became her.” And then we were all supposed to laugh. Because it was funny.

  * * *

  Dinner, a week later. A steak, a martini, a dress she borrowed from her friend Cora, who had men pay all her bills. The dress had a deep V in the front, and it was red, and the buttons at the cuffs shone like tiny pearls.

  “I’m going back to New York soon, when this is all over. I was just dabbling here,” he said.

  Already he liked her, she could tell. She’d keep his secrets and ask for nothing but objects. Already she liked him. She almost said, “Take me with you,” hurled herself at him and clung to him. Not because she loved that city. But just to be on his arm there.

  Instead she said, “New York’s a blast. I went there with Cora this spring. We took the train.”

  “What did you do while you were there? Did you do a little of this?” He tapped on his nose, sniffed, and winked.

  She looked at him blankly. “I don’t know what you mean,” she said.

  Tonight he wasn’t wearing a suit, and it was warmer, and he was sweating. “You don’t know what that is, huh. No, you sure don’t. Let me guess, you went to a museum.”

  “We did, we went to the Met!” she said.

  There was a cigar sticking out of his pocket; he smoked it after dinner as they strolled through Cambridge. He would only be around for two more months. “I want to see you while I’m here,” he said.

  “I’d like that,” she said.

  And then a funny thing happened, which was he didn’t try to screw her. In fact, he barely tried to kiss her, and it would never occur to her to make any kind of move on him. Instead, they ate, they walked, they flirted. They talked of his dreams, the buildings he would erect, the businesses he would start, the money he would make. “I know you can do it,” she said. They stopped in front of a furniture store window, and she cocked her head, pointed out what she liked, what was overpriced. She put her hand on the glass for a second, then slipped it into his arm. “Anyway,” she said.

  “You’re a good girl, Barbie,” he told her. I’m bad, she wanted to say in return, I can be bad. But she just smiled coyly, waiting for him to seize her.

  “I’d say he’s courting me, but there’s no talk of the future, let alone of right now,” she told Cora.

  They were eating lunch on a bench near the Charles River. Cora had a secretarial job too, but it was part time, and she didn’t care for it, and what she really wanted was to live somewhere far away and warm. She wanted an old, sexless Jew, she had told Barbra that before, begged her to fix her up with some aging relative with a house in Miami. “I look great in a bikini,” she said. “A tropical cocktail in my hand. With one of those little umbrellas.” Although in principle both women believed in love, neither of them believed in romance. It was all a performance for them, what women had to do for men, what men had to do for women—it was a manner of assessing each other’s value. Cora had taken an economics class in college and was fairly certain her vagina was a capitalist tool.

  “You sure you want his love? I think you could do better,” said Cora.

  “I don’t know what better means anymore,” said Barbra. She fed the rest of her sandwich to the birds. She was trying to keep slim.

  Eventually Victor moved back to New York, and she imagined it was over. One last walk along the Charles, and he kissed the top of her hand furiously, then disappeared. She received a few phone calls, but he was out of sight, out of her reach. It was a cold, stark month of her life. To her great disappointment, she found she was hooked on him, the idea of him. Should she have slept with him? She asked Cora, she asked her mother.

  “It wouldn’t have kept him coming back,” said her mother, still technically married to her absent husband. Not bitter, just factual.

  “Access to a vagina guarantees nothing,” said Cora, three years away from moving to Hawaii, on a whim, and settling down with another mainlander, an older woman, a grower of things, near the base of a volcano. The woman had bookshelves for miles, it seemed, and they would read to each other at night before bed, and it was then that Cora understood romance, at last.

  All Barbra could do was wait. He called her from a different location each time. He was moving around, staying in hotels, and with friends, and once in an empty house in Connecticut, only a mattress and a table in the place, he told her. “And this phone which I’m calling you on to say hello and good night, Barbra.” He’d had an interview in the city, which had gone well, followed by drinking, which had apparently also gone well, and then he had taken a late train home
. The owners of the house had gotten divorced, and the wife had taken everything, except for these few sticks, barely enough to start a fire.

  “It’s disheartening,” he said. “Why bother?”

  Because love, she almost said. Because home. Because us. She hadn’t known she believed in all these things until she met him.

  “Still,” she said, “they must have been in love once.”

  “Ah, love, whatever,” he said, and she rushed off the phone to have a proper, quiet cry to herself.

  “Make yourself unavailable,” said Cora. “He’s testing you. Don’t let him. And he’s making you miserable, and you don’t deserve it. You haven’t done anything but give him your attention.” She did not say “love.” What one person does with her heart was none of Cora’s business. Cora, who, when she was much older, would be diagnosed with stomach cancer, the outcome inescapable. She jumped into the volcano she’d been staring at the last two decades. An actual thing she had loved, that volcano. She did it at sunset, so it felt like a poem.

  “I thought I was playing hard to get already,” said Barbra.

  “He’s a different kind of beast,” said Cora. “He doesn’t want your pussy. He wants your soul.”

  This should have chilled Barbra, but instead it aroused her. She did as Cora said. She was suddenly nowhere to be found. She was walking the streets of Cambridge, or she was dining with her mother in Brookline, where Anya had moved in recent years, shaking her head at the latest news about her father. If the phone was ringing, she wasn’t hearing it. Victor left messages for her at work, and she filed them away in a folder labeled FU. One morning he sent flowers, and they were beautiful, she had to admit, if a bit vulgar. “One dozen would have been enough,” she murmured to Cora on the phone. Three was too much. Finally she opened the note. “One dozen for every week we haven’t spoken,” it read. All right, fine, she thought. She would be home tonight. She would take his call.