Eve in the City

by Thomas Rayfiel

  “That’s impossible,” I murmured.

  “You’re right. It is. But I didn’t know that. Not at first. Then I began to realize that every guy I saw was really him. They were all these cheap little plastic imitations of my father. I thought I was rebelling, but really I was just following in everyone else’s footsteps, all these women I was so contemptuous of.”

  “Didn’t he care?”

  “He only cared about me when I screwed up. So that’s what I started doing, more and more. I took really stupid chances, to get his attention. And it worked. That’s the amazing thing. Suddenly, one day, he was there. Taking care of me. I guess he felt responsible. Or maybe he just noticed me, now that I wasn’t a child anymore. Maybe it took my being a woman for me to even appear on his radar. I don’t know. But instead of ignoring me, he got incredibly controlling. He started wanting to know where I was going every night. Who I was seeing. He went from not being there for me at all to demanding the ultimate say over every aspect of my life. It was this complete turnaround.”

  I smiled. It didn’t sound so bad. I mean, it did, but . . .

  “For a while I went along with it. I was totally submissive. I let him tell me what to do. I mean, I was his daughter, after all. Then, one day, when I was wondering what he would say about something, whether he would approve or disapprove, I looked in the mirror, and saw my mother! This was exactly what happened to her. I was tiptoeing around, hearing his comments even when he wasn’t there, imagining his will and then obeying it. Like this slave girl.”

  “So what were you doing the night I saw you?”

  “Trying to get away! It didn’t start out being so dramatic. I just got dressed up and went to a bar. I wanted to have a good time. Like I used to. At first everything went fine. There was this guy. There always is, if you set your sights low enough. I told him I knew a place. He probably thought I meant I lived around there, but he was so wasted he would have followed me anywhere. We walked around a bit. Then I led him back to the building. I don’t know what I was thinking. I wasn’t thinking. And then . . .”

  Her voice trailed off.

  “You saw me.”

  “I saw you before.”

  “Before when?”

  “Before you saw me. I looked over, and saw you coming down the street. I know this sounds corny, but I saw myself through your eyes: this neurotic little girl showing off for Daddy. That’s when I freaked. Suddenly I didn’t want to be her anymore. I wanted to grow up. Or I had grown up, that’s what was so scary, but I was still doing this, still repeating the same mistake, over and over. It was terrifying. I hadn’t gotten clear of anything at all. With every move I made I was getting even more tangled up in this web of craziness I’d spent my whole life trying to escape. And I wanted to stop. But he wouldn’t let me. He wouldn’t let me go.”

  I opened my eyes. She was leaning forward. The world was completely different. But not in a way I could explain. The colors, the shapes. Some lens had been twisted while I wasn’t looking, making everything unbearably sharp and tight.

  “Who?” I was confused. “Who wouldn’t let you go? You mean your father, or the guy you picked up?”

  “What does it matter? The important thing is that I cut myself free.”

  “But, Marron, did you ever actually tell him you wanted to stop?”

  “Well, I certainly thought it.”

  “Oh.”

  “Then I dyed my hair, right before the Opening, in case you came. Everyone said how good it looked. Sometimes I think that’s the reason the show was a hit. Because of my hair. So I owe it all to you, in a way. My success.”

  “I can’t believe I didn’t recognize you.”

  “You weren’t ready. Not then.” She wiped her mouth. We were down to our plates. “So are you going to do it? Are you going to help them lock me up?”

  Our kneecaps were flat against each other. I could feel her bones through the suede. On the tabletop, in the debris of the meal, a balled-up paper napkin was slowly expanding, like a white rose.

  “I knew my father would try to use you. That’s how he works. That’s why I had to get to know you. So we could talk. So you could hear my side of it.”

  “You stabbed that man for no reason?”

  “I stabbed him for every reason in the world! You saw what he was doing.”

  “But you said—”

  “It doesn’t matter if I wanted it or not. He shouldn’t have been there in the first place. A woman takes her chances every time she goes out the door with some guy. Why shouldn’t a man take his chances, too? I really don’t see what all the fuss is about.”

  Then she reached out and touched her finger to the center of my forehead, as if she was tapping into my thoughts.

  “How much did he offer?”

  “It doesn’t matter.” I swallowed. “I said no.”

  “You said no, but you meant yes. That’s why you told him you’d meet me. So you would be convinced. So you would say, She’s crazy. She should be locked up. So you could pretend you didn’t have a choice. See, in this society it’s OK to be a slut about money, just not about sex.”

  That got me mad. I hated it when people used the special insults only I was permitted to call myself.

  “You know, you’re the kind of person who gives women a bad name.”

  “I try.” She smiled. “After all, who wants to be a good girl? They’re the worst.”

  “And for a while there, I actually thought I liked you.”

  “You didn’t like me. You wanted to be me. That’s different.”

  I thought about it. She was right. Buying the knife. Wearing her clothes. I envied her. I even envied what I’d seen on the street that night: someone freeing herself. But at what a price.

  “What about Horace?” I argued. “He’s not your dad. You don’t want him the way you want those other guys. You love him.”

  She faltered. There was this crack in her confidence.

  “Horace is just a friend. He loves you.”

  “No he doesn’t. He paints me.”

  “That’s love, to Horace.”

  I shook my head. I never understood what Marron said. No, I did. It just seemed so obvious, once she explained, something we all knew but didn’t want to hear. It made sense, but was embarrassing. She’s a genius, I remembered people saying, and thought, God, maybe she is. Maybe that’s being a genius, seeing the obvious.

  “What’s in it for me? If I don’t tell?” I tried making it a joke. “You never got me a present, remember? You said you would find me the perfect thing.”

  She stared.

  “Maybe I already have.”

  After, I walked, trying to find my way back in, back to that feeling I had when I first came to the city. But the streets seemed familiar now. Instead of sounding the pavement, listening for a secret passageway, stepping sideways into a parallel universe, I was going over everything in my mind, seeing it from the perspective of a person who’d been through something, though what I still couldn’t say. On the way home, I passed the newspaper vendor dragging the last of his bundles inside. He nodded, then came back out with a piece of carpet and a portable radio. I watched as he carefully oriented himself in a direction that had nothing to do with city blocks, and kneeled.

  “One God?” I asked, remembering a prayer from The Penguin Guide to Islam.

  “. . . and Muhammad is His prophet,” he answered automatically.

  The muezzin’s broadcast call bounced off buildings.

  It wasn’t until a few days later that I thought I understood.

  Marron’s words came back to me. “That’s love, to Horace.” Was she giving me her blessing? Was she explaining, Yes, he did love me, and so I was allowed to love him back now? After all, hadn’t the only thing missing from my wanting him been that I was pretty sure he didn’t want me? That maybe he didn’t even know how to want someone? And now that he’d proved he could, even if it was in this typically sick, boy way, by painting a huge privacy-destroying
picture instead of just being nice to me personally, what exactly was left to hesitate over? It’s not like I couldn’t imagine being with him. As a matter of fact, that’s about all I could imagine. It was the position my mind occupied when nothing else was going on, this daydream that was always playing and that I only occasionally—say, ten or fifteen times an hour—checked in on. Even my anger was just another excuse to think about him. It was so deep, the urge. Maybe that was the problem. In which case all I had to do was decide it wasn’t a problem. Decide I loved him. But can you decide that?

  I called the Port Authority Lanes and asked to speak to the manager. Viktor sounded nervous. I told him I wanted my passport and I wanted it now, that I was leaving the country, going as soon as possible. There was this silence. I heard voices in the background. Women’s voices. I realized he had a whole little circle of worshipful admirers working for him there, too. Just like at the bar. It didn’t make me mad. It made me nostalgic. It also increased my determination. He couldn’t get around me the way he used to. I told him that if the things he’d said meant anything, then he should do what he promised. Anyone would have thought I was pitiful, this jilted girlfriend trying to make him keep his word. But I didn’t let my voice break, or ask any questions, or allow him to talk at all. He couldn’t. I saw him there, surrounded by these wounded, jealous girls, each feeling she owned a piece of him, that she had some special relationship going, all of them listening while pretending not to, while he shifted nervously from foot to foot. He’s a bully, and bullies are really cowards, I told myself. If I put it just right, he would do anything I said.

  But when he did, I was completely shocked.

  “Yes, why not?” he sighed.

  “What?”

  “One Centre Street.” He was using his bored, business voice, talking to a salesman or a collection agency, someone he wanted to hustle off the phone. “This afternoon. Four forty-five.”

  “Today?”

  “You say it is urgent, yes?”

  “One Centre Street, that’s . . . Is that the big building next to City Hall? Is that where people get married?”

  “As you know, I can refuse you nothing.”

  “Wait a minute,” I said. “I just wanted the documentation. Does this mean we’re actually—?”

  But he had hung up. He started to hang up before he said whatever his last words were going to be, so they came simultaneously with the click. The phone was still in my hand, this clunky engagement ring. Four forty-five. I wanted to write it down, so I wouldn’t forget, even though there wasn’t much chance of that. No, to make it more real. One Centre Street. So I could look at it, over and over again, on a piece of paper. I wanted to get up, but I couldn’t. I was sitting cross-legged on the floor, absolutely still and yet ascending, blasting off. Even though it was fake, even though it was just to get him a green card and me a passport, it meant something. That’s what surprised me. I straightened my back, improved my posture, practicing for life as a married woman. And I had managed to do it without saying yes!

  That’s what I wanted to tell Mother. This wave of sweet sadness washed over me. I intensely missed everything. My innocent girlhood days . . . which are these! I laid the receiver gently down.

  Hey, guess what? I’m getting married!

  That’s what I wanted to say. To anyone I met. But since I didn’t have anyone to meet, I just kept it inside, where it bubbled away, fermenting, until it changed, so when it finally did come out, it was something else entirely:

  “I’m here to see Mr. Conover. About a job.”

  They looked at me.

  Do what I say, I smiled, and no one gets hurt. I’m a woman with a wedding date and I’m not afraid to use it.

  “Mr. Conover? In Human Resources?”

  “That’s right.”

  They had said they were interested. They had told me to check back with them. And here I was. I didn’t know what the lie-detector man wrote, but I talked my way past that, too. I talked my way past all their hesitations. I think it was my manner, this mix of enthusiasm and fanatical sureness. I showed initiative. There was never a second’s doubt they were going to hire me as a salesgirl. I made it seem like the only thing they could do. I kept waiting for this voice inside me to object, but there were no voices anymore. I was solid. All one piece.

  BLOOMINGDALE’S, EVE SMITH, TEMPORARY EMPLOYEE, it read, this card they gave me. It was much fancier than what I used to dream of, working in a drugstore, having one of those cheap badges with my name in green label tape. This was so official. Too bad I was only going to use it once. I went to the bridal shop. The same woman was in charge. I didn’t think she recognized me. I got her to let me take it into the changing room this time, the dress I had been so knocked out by. It fit. I could go into ecstasies about how it remolded my entire body, not in some pinching, suffocating way, just the opposite, how it gave me this hidden ease I never even suspected I could have, how I slouched and it turned even that into a kind of gesture, what you’d see in a fashion magazine. But all that I noticed later. Looking into the mirror, I was in too much of a hurry to wonder anything more than, would I be late? The saleslady, buttoning it from behind, breathed, “Oh God, it’s perfect.” She must have been waiting for me to cry or faint, because she seemed disappointed when all I did was ask what time it was.

  “Ten to four.”

  “I’ll take it.”

  She tried explaining about the special box it came in, how I couldn’t possibly wear it out of the store, that there were all these booklets and flyers about proper care, showing how you could preserve it for years to come. “So your daughter can use it.” I didn’t have time for any of that. I whipped out my employee identification card and then almost all the cash I had left in the world. It felt good, instead of going broke by dribs and drabs. This was more like gambling. I was putting all my money on me. Me and my dress.

  “Oh, you work here.”

  “I just started.”

  “Didn’t they tell you? Employees don’t become eligible for the discount until they’ve been here a month.”

  My heart sank. We both looked down at the money I’d heaped by the register. A moment ago it seemed like so much. Now it wasn’t nearly enough. Then I saw she did recognize me, or recognized something in me.

  “It’s OK, honey.” She started pressing the machine.

  I watched her. At first I didn’t know what she meant. Then I saw she was copying numbers off her own ID card, the one she wore on a clip off her shirt pocket. The drawer popped open. She started sorting the cash. She glanced at me once, surprised I was still there.

  “Go,” she said.

  She didn’t even give me a receipt. She knew I wasn’t coming back.

  The express was out of service. That’s how I ended up on the number six train again, going downtown, to City Hall this time, in my wedding dress. Now, this is how it’s supposed to be, I thought, looking at the stations as we slowed for each, taking on more and more passengers. This is the aisle and I’m coming down it and all these strangers are my relatives, the people I haven’t seen in years but who show up at occasions like this. They all looked vaguely familiar. Uncles, aunts, cousins, grandparents, nieces and nephews. Citizens. My accidental family. The dress was a white waterfall. But short. I could still see my sneakers. I had forgotten about shoes. It didn’t matter. There was also, instead of perfume, this nauseating new-car smell rising off the fabric. The sizing, I guess. But it all came together. I was as beautiful as I was ever going to be.

  Once upon a time, I wanted to be someone else. Anyone else. I would pass a person on the street and think, I want to be her. For no reason. Just because it would relieve me of the burden of being me. They were closing the door to the Marriage Bureau. I was the last one in. I thought if I had a part to play, instead of just being who I was, I could do it better. Start fresh. Be less messy. That’s what this felt like, wearing white, heading for the altar. A new beginning.

  “Eve.” Viktor was w
earing a tie. It made him look very European, and nervous. “You came.”

  “Just,” I breathed. “Did you see? They almost didn’t let me in. You said four-forty-five, right?”

  “Yes. They stop taking applications then. So the office can close at five. It is the only time the line moves fast. Civil servants, you know.”

  He had shaved and cut himself. I could see the small slash under one ear. So what do you think? I was about to ask, and model the dress, do a little spin, but he went on, in this urgent whisper, “I did not think you were coming. I kept trying to call you back. I could not talk, before. There were too many people around.”

  “Why were you trying to call me back?

  “Hey, Eve. Is that a wedding dress?”

  Crystal was standing next to him. I hadn’t seen her at first. Or I had, but I didn’t think it was her. I rejected the idea. She looked different, somehow. She didn’t belong with the rest of the picture.

  “What are you doing here?” I asked.

  “We are getting married,” he said. “Crystal and me.”

  “Crystal and I,” I corrected automatically.

  “No. Not you.”

  “I know. But you said, Crystal and me. It’s Crystal and I.”

  “Don’t be silly. How could you marry her? You are a woman.” It was like our language had completely broken down. “I am marrying Crystal. That is what I was trying to tell you.”

  “When? When did you try and tell me?”

  “When I called your number repeatedly. Where were you?”

  “Out.” I pulled back my sleeve. She was trying to touch the material. “It’s not a wedding dress. It’s just a dress.”

  “I’m pregnant, Eve.”

  “Of course you are. That’s obvious.”

  It was, now that I looked. She was huge. I just hadn’t seen her in a while. Viktor was kicking the floor.

  “You said you needed your passport so urgently,” he complained. “And my friend was delivering them to me here just now. There were items I needed as well, to go through with the ceremony. But after I got off the phone, I realized you might think—”