In the Flesh

by Hilma Wolitzer

  I went into the luncheonette and noticed that it was lunchtime. Several people were sitting at the counter and two men behind it were making sandwiches and pouring drinks. Was I hungry? For once I wasn’t sure, but I sat down and ordered a hamburger and a glass of milk. I had taken the stool closest to the door and I turned and saw that almost the whole car was visible from my seat. This was where Howard probably bought his cigarettes.

  The man brought the hamburger and he smiled at me. Did I look nice to him? Did I seem like a reasonable woman, a non-spy, a victim of the circumstances? I ate the hamburger and watched the street. I thought of ordering coffee to stall for time, but I couldn’t even drink the milk. I slid off the stool and walked to the magazine rack. Next to Good Housekeeping and Esquire, there was a stack of those newspapers with stories about cows giving birth to human babies and of children being kept for years in closets and birdcages.

  The headlines said: MAN WAKES AFTER FORTY-YEAR COMA. A photograph showed the man kissing his corsaged and smiling wife on the cheek at the end of her long vigil. Talk about just rewards. Talk about tenacity and devotion. Well, I certainly wasn’t going to stand in that place watching the seasons change, waiting forever. Would I get my just rewards anyway?

  Across the street the door of their building opened, but only a man with a dachshund on a lead emerged. The man looked skyward and the dog squatted on the sidewalk. Then they went back inside. I decided it was time to move on.

  The laundromat had an air of abandonment. There was a round area of lighter paint on one wall where a clock had probably been ripped off. A machine for the dispensing of detergent and bleach was plastered with out-of-order notices. Over the washers there was a sign reminding customers that this was their laundromat, to keep it clean and not to overload the machines. Absolutely no dyeing in these machines, it ordered. And underneath someone had written, Drop Dead, Drink Clorox, eat shit. There were year-old copies of Time on a splintered bench. They were filled with ancient news. All of the washers were dancing with action. Soap rose up like the foam of the tide. Pink things came to the fore, then blue, then green. In the rear of the store, four dryers were spinning furiously. Were their things in there? There was a cork bulletin board next to the dryers and I went over to read the notices. There was an ad for the dancing school next door, an inevitable offer of free kittens, a reward proffered for the return of a man’s diamond pinky ring, and an election flyer from last November for a defeated candidate. Did I expect a notice for me from Howard? Help, I am being kept captive by desire. Was Howard himself my anonymous friend? I thought of those mad killers who leave frantic messages scrawled in blood or lipstick across their victims’ walls. Somebody! Please stop me before it’s too late. I could rush into their building and crash into their room like Wonder Woman. Maybe I’d find Howard tied to the bed, bound by stockings, writhing while she did to him the things he loved best. I looked across the street. “Come on,” I said. “I can’t stay here forever.”

  Next door at the dancing school, I shaded my eyes and looked through the window. It was a reception room filled with waiting parents. Some carried babies and there were children’s shoes and clothing jammed into the cubbies on the walls. I almost expected to see my own mother there the way I remembered her at Miss Peel’s, my private wardrobe mistress, her arms loaded with costume changes.

  I went inside where I could hear the bum-diddy-bum of the piano. A baby in the reception room began to cry and his mother waved a ring of keys in his face and he cried louder. From the other room a voice said, “And again, and again,” and there was a thunderburst of tapping feet.

  “Is yours with Madame Dorothy?” a woman asked. I realized she was talking to me.

  “Yes,” I said.

  She hunched forward and cupped her hand to her mouth. “What do you think of her?”

  “Well, you know,” I said.

  “Yeah,” she agreed, and we exchanged conspiratorial smiles.

  Then a door behind us opened and a herd of leotarded little girls rushed into the room. I thought: any one of them might have been mine, any one of them might have been me, for that matter, pushed back in time. What is this urgent connection between parents and children, between husbands and wives? The little girls seemed interchangeable, with their plump buttocks, their hair straying from ribbons and clips, that chorus of high-pitched excitement. And yet each belonged to someone, homed to one waiting mother. I left in the chaos of reunion.

  It was getting colder now, the winter sun pale and cloud-wrapped. I put my hands in my pockets and stared across the street. I was almost finished with my stations of the cross and nothing had happened. And what if it did? If I saw them would I become paralyzed, would I faint, scream for a cop, for an ambulance, for the National Guard?

  I looked through the window into the beauty shop. There were several women in different stages of becoming more beautiful. They all seemed happy. The hairdresser slapped his thigh with a brush and leaned intimately over the woman in his chair. A pretty girl in a white dress swept curls of hair into a tidy hill. Women looked into mirrors and smiled at themselves. I wanted to go inside. I wanted to lie back and have someone wash my hair. I wanted to be happy too.

  And then I looked across the street and Howard and Mrs. X came out of the building holding hands and my eyes were caught where they were joined and I forgot to look for clues, at their faces or the way they walked. They climbed into the blue car and the doors closed bang bang and the motor roared and they were gone. It was true.

  28

  DEAR HOWARD,

  Here’s what’s happened TO me. I’ve turned into the kind of person who writes letters she doesn’t intend to mail. Do you remember I told you my mother used to do that? She called it getting it off her chest. She wrote plenty of them to my father, of course, digging up ancient grievances like arrowheads, reminding him of sacrifices made and promises not kept. Her sacrifices, his promises. She wrote to cousins who had insulted her at a wedding twenty years before, and to her dead mother-in-law, who left everything of value to my father’s sisters, even though he had contributed the most to her support.

  So here I am writing to you, but I’m not going to bring up old injuries if I can help it. This is going to be more like those mimeographed newsletters out-of-town friends send at Christmastime to help you keep up with their lives.

  Here’s what’s been happening to me. Everyone is offering advice. Judy and Lenny want me to start something legal against you or go into therapy. With luck I might find a therapist who practices law on the side. Lenny says my passivity only encourages your behavior.

  Sherry says I got out just in time, before I lost my youth and looks. Who wants to be tied down to household drudgery when I could be having fun? She wants me to try marijuana and a comprehensive horoscope reading. She’s encouraging us to move in with her. I could save on rent money and be where all the action is.

  I guess you can imagine what my mother and father are saying.

  The kids have been pretty good, considering the situation. Judy says it will all come out twenty years from now, with Annie jumping into bed with men old enough to be her father, and Jason having big problems with sexual identity.

  I figured maybe that prophecy of asthma would come true now. Jason would start wheezing and you’d come running. But tragedy doesn’t always happen when you need it the most. Instead, Jason blinks a lot, a terrific new habit, especially when he looks at me. I know you’re supposed to ignore it, and I do, for a long, long time, and then I can’t help myself; I say, “Stop doing that, you’re driving me crazy,” and of course that makes it worse.

  Annie won’t use the potty anymore. I guess she’ll be wetting the beds of all those old guys who will symbolize you. Do you think I should go to a real shrink? Would he really be able to shrink me, ha ha? The truth is, I’m not losing weight, even now. I feel fragile and starved, in a way, but the mirror doesn’t lie. If food is lovely when you’re happy, it’s pretty good when you’re
sad, too. I eat in bed a lot. You don’t need Freud to figure that out.

  I think word has gotten out about my new status, whatever it is. Is there an underground newspaper for flashers? Headline: PAULETTE F. HAS BEEN LEFT FLAT BY HER HUSBAND. GIVE HER A COUPLE OF QUICK LOOKS TO CHEER HER UP. Two on the subway in one week. One in the library the other day, I swear it. He laid himself on the shelf, a poor little bookworm, between Dostoevsky and Dreiser, probably hoping someone would reach in without looking.

  The super finally sent his oldest son up to fix that faucet I told him about two months ago. When the kid left he pressed my left nipple as if he was ringing a doorbell. Earl, from the market, was here too, and I think he was willing to give me a tumble, even before I could check out the order. Would he still have expected his tip?

  I took the children to Pearlman for their checkup, and the old devil seemed interested too. But he’s not what I need, Howard. He has nothing to do with old longings and that adolescent rise and plunge of the heart. He has no remedies for the madness of dreams or the wistful sanity of what was familiar and dear. Oh, Howard.

  So. What have you been doing with yourself? Don’t answer that question.

  I just wanted you to know that I’m not sitting around waiting. I’m looking for a part-time job. I’m thinking of going back to school. And there are plenty of men in this world. Così fan tutte, kiddo.

  Confession: When you came for the children last Sunday, I looked through the window. When I saw you cutting across 108th just like old times, I wanted to drop a water bomb on your head. On Valentine’s Day, I wanted to send you a dripping calf’s heart.

  What do you want me to do with all that junk you’ve left here? This isn’t a warehouse.

  Paulie

  29

  MOST OF THE ADS said, No skills needed, but when I’d get there it was a different story. Even the ones who admitted to looking for Lite typing, good personality, really wanted a smiling bellringer, Liberace at the keyboard of an Underwood.

  I hadn’t been prepared for any of this. Instead, I had been passed from my parents’ arms to Howard’s like the baton in a relay race, and I had given up all sorts of possible lives in the transition.

  After the first day of job-hunting, I swore that I wouldn’t make the same mistake with my own daughter. Girls raised on fairy tales find out fast enough that spinning straw into gold is only seasonal work. As soon as Annie was old enough to walk without holding on, I was going to send her to a trade school and get her ready for the real world.

  At Alexander’s there were at least thirty other applicants. Each of us held a newspaper opened to the circled ad. On-the-job training. All departments. No experience necessary. The woman waiting next to me told me she was a night-student at a school for beauticians, and was hoping now for an opening in cosmetics or wigs. “What about you?” she asked.

  “Oh, anything,” I said. But I was secretly hoping for the best, for someone to spot my latent executive or artistic ability. On-the-job training, I thought. Buying might be nice. Or window design. Even a job in personnel would be better than selling. Walking through the main floor of the store that morning, I had felt depressed. People surrounded sales tables, looking like farm animals at feeding troughs. Blouses and skirts flew from hand to hand. “Watch the merchandise!” a saleswoman screamed. One woman was making her way slowly across the floor in mincing little steps, the shoes she was trying on still joined together by nylon thread. Would she make it to the mirrors before closing time? A voice on the loudspeakers announced action on the second floor, and a small herd broke loose and stampeded to the escalators.

  Upstairs, in the fur department, the coats were chained to the racks. A large woman, trying on a bushy raccoon, looked like King Kong, struggling against captivity.

  The beautician and I wished one another luck and went to separate cubicles to be interviewed. “Experience?” I was asked by the personnel clerk.

  “None,” I said cheerfully, and when she frowned, I pointed to the line in the ad that declared experience unnecessary.

  “Well, it’s preferred,” she said.

  Why didn’t they say that? I wondered. But I only said, “I learn very fast.”

  “Stand up,” she commanded.

  I stood, and she walked around me, clucking her tongue. She was a little bowlegged thing in a polyester pants suit. “Just a minute,” she said. She picked up her phone and dialed three numerals. “Mr. G.? I think I’ve got one for you. Yes, now. Can you come by?”

  Mr. G. seemed overjoyed to see me. He walked around me too, and I began to feel pleased and expectant. “Perfect!” he said. “Terrific!” He patted the personnel clerk’s shoulder and asked me to come with him. I followed down a long corridor to a door marked Harold Granick, Security.

  “Oh, wait a minute. Listen,” I said. “I don’t think …”

  But Granick wasn’t listening. “Have a seat,” he said, and he began to whistle and rummage through the papers on his desk. He looked up finally, clasping his hands in front of him. “Do you have any idea of the amount of money lost each year by retailers because of shoplifting?”

  I was trying to come up with a reasonable guess, but the question must have been rhetorical because he went right on. “Do you know that important scientists are working around the clock trying to come up with a foolproof detection system?”

  This time I didn’t even bother trying to answer. I just sighed.

  “Do you want to spend the rest of your life behind a counter in housewares? In men’s underwear? Do you think there’s a real future in selling?”

  “Would I have to carry a gun?” I asked.

  That broke him up. “A sense of humor, too!” he said. “Oh, lady, you are wonderful! Well, we don’t shoot our shoplifters here at Alexander’s, although that might be the ultimate solution. In fact, we don’t always have them arrested either. Mostly we try to deter criminals, to intimidate them by letting them know they’re being watched at all times. For instance. Say you spot someone stashing merchandise under his coat. He’s still in the store so you can’t accuse him of anything, right? All apprehension must take place outside the store. Your job wouldn’t be accusatory or punitive, mind you. In fact, you’re the good guy. Like Pat O’Brien, you give him one more chance to go straight. What you would do is go up and ask if he’d like a salesperson to help him with that blanket or ski jacket or whatever. Do you get it? You’re perfectly pleasant, but he knows you’re on to him. You give him a chance to get out of it, to say, no thanks, I’ve changed my mind, and to drop the goods. Let him go to Korvettes or Mays if he still wants to steal. Let him go to Bloomingdale’s if he’s got class.

  “You look nice, you have a nice sweet face. No uniform, no walkie-talkie, no gun, ha ha. But you look, well … formidable. And there’ll be a real guard within yelling distance all the time.”

  “I don’t know,” I said.

  “Are you worried about the discount?” he asked. “This is a democracy, Sweetheart. The same as for sales personnel: twenty percent on personal purchases, ten on everything else. And variety! You’ll be in shoes, in jewelry, in appliances, in haberdashery! Just give it a try. I think you’re going to love it.”

  Granick started me out in the basement. He said I could work my way up, and then he laughed and punched me on the arm. He introduced me to a couple of saleswomen and to the security men in the area who demonstrated some simple hand signals that would bring them running. “Keep your eyes open,” Granick said. “That’s the main thing.”

  It was interesting for a while, from a sociological point of view. There were the men and women who seemed very poor, sifting through tables and racks for real bargains. And the rich ones, with Gucci bags and shoes, who had gone underground to satisfy the hunting instinct. Teenage girls in dressing rooms struggled with their mothers for power, and small children lay scattered on the floor, felled by boredom.

  Which ones are the real crooks? I wondered. The rich women, who spend almost all the
ir time shopping and become easily prone to that occupational disease—kleptomania? Or the truly deprived, who reason that they must take what will never come to them legally in this life? I could have been Margaret Mead out in the bush, observing the rituals of survival. I saw all the little imperfections of physicality and dress: bald spots and birthmarks, errant slipstraps and run-down shoes. Everyone looked innocent to me, made vulnerable by close observation. Maybe the real crooks were in inventory, I decided, juggling the books.

  But according to Granick, there were shoplifters everywhere. They were walking out right under our very noses, with jewelry stuffed into special interior pockets, with small appliances plugged into every orifice. I wandered through the aisles, watching.

  Finally I saw my first one. I gasped. He certainly didn’t look very professional. He took a radio and jammed it right into the front of his coat. It wasn’t even done surreptitiously; he just shoved it in until it was out of sight. His chest bulged a little and I wondered why he hadn’t settled for a smaller, less conspicuous model. Maybe this was only a setup, devised by Granick, to test me.

  I walked toward the man at a casual pace, but my heart was knocking. “Hi!” I said. “Do you need any help?”

  He looked me over coolly. “No,” he said.

  “Well, I thought you might like a salesman to help you with that radio.”

  “What radio?” he said, staring me down.

  Had I really seen a radio? Now I wasn’t sure. There were so many people, so much noise. Even if I had heard the one o’clock news coming through his coat buttons then, I would still have been in doubt. “I thought you needed help,” I said. “I must have made a mistake.” I smiled and backed away.