I stop only after she threatens to follow after me. Already she is asking questions, motioning me toward her as I turn around. I answer that Matt had too much to drink after we finished our video and we were driving him home. “That’s all,” I say in reference to everything and nothing. Cara gives me a look that suggests she is about to harangue me again over working with Matt, then changes her mind. Despite her disapproval regarding my spending any time with Matt at all, she wants me near and invites me into the house.
I shouldn’t, and there is no explaining, but in the light of the porch, with the stars above and the canopy of night framing her, in her T-shirt and no bra, her large breasts as I have touched and sucked and done more with than I care to mention, in shorts which show the smooth wonder of her thighs and bare feet made wide on the planks, I find myself aroused. Still I avoid Cara’s hand while I climb the steps; I tell her to send Gloria out and we’ll be off. “Don’t be silly,” she answers in a firm excited way and, taking my arm, ushers me inside.
•
Matt has put music on the stereo, Miles Davis’s Bitches Brew. He has brought glasses to the table and ice, a bottle of gin and whiskey, and more wine. The front room with the stereo is all wood, the floor and shelves, the furniture and trim. There is a large red rug with a light blue and gold weave centering the floor. On the rug Gloria is swaying to the sound of Miles Davis’ horn.
•
From the dining room, through the open French doors, Matt can see Gloria moving to the music. If time and memory did not exist he could create from this vision a life they would have already had together. How perfect he imagines it would be. Of what came before, he doesn’t want to think about now; he is determined to accept that things change and go the way they do. What lasts and lingers, lives and disappears, he can’t explain—he can only address what is there now in the rhythm and release of song.
•
I see Matt staring after Gloria, marveling at the possibilities, indulging in the fantasy, giving himself no caution when Cara comes back inside and says about the booze on the table, “Haven’t you had enough?”
“Possibly,” Matt replies. “I’m not sure.”
•
I approach Gloria and say in a half-whispered urgency, “Let’s go.” She smiles as if she hasn’t heard me at all, she is dancing still, her hands in the air. Although her movements are light, there is resistance in her face as she twirls and looks at me and finally answers, “Let’s not just yet.”
Cara comes and stands beside me. Matt has filled his glass with either water or gin, I can’t be sure, and entering the front room he does a sort of shimmy step that is supposed to mirror a dance. Gloria turns toward him and together they wiggle, while the music builds through the playing of John McLaughlin and Lenny White, Bennie Maupin and Dave Holland, Chick Corea on piano and Miles’s horn like a sensual fog snaking its way around every note. I go back to the kitchen and then to the dining table where I pour whiskey over ice. One by one the others join me. Cara puts down coasters for our drinks, small square pads of mock-straw. I sit on the far side. Cara takes the chair next to me. Matt and Gloria sit across. The kids, Eli and Lia, are out for the night. Both of Matt’s hands are wrapped around his glass. When he looks at Gloria, his fingers continue to dance.
“Do you want to hear something funny?” Matt puts the question to the group, though he is eyeing me. Cara taps my foot with hers beneath the table. I sip my whiskey as Matt says, “I saw you. A few weeks ago at the market. Cara and I were there. Do you remember, Cara? I said, ‘There’s Eric McCanus’ and Cara said, ‘Who?’” He appears amused before going on. “Three days later you showed up at SunGreen and then at our house.”
“Imagine that,” Gloria feigns surprise.
I downplay the coincidence while reminding Matt, “We shop at the same market. Our houses are close. The city’s not that big.”
“No, it’s not,” Matt says in turn. “I suppose we’ve been together at shops and movies and plays before, even readings and on campus dozens of times without knowing it.”
“I’m sure that’s true.”
“Could be,” Matt says. “Probably. But that was the first time I saw you. At the market.”
“And three days later,” Gloria can’t resist.
“Eric came to see me,” Cara says possessively, tying us this way, touching my arm up high beneath the sleeve.
“It makes me wonder about the way things happen,” Matt again, turns toward Gloria, his head tipped so close I think he might put it all the way onto her shoulder. I nudge Cara to see if she objects, but she says nothing. “Anyway,” Matt sits up, glances back in my direction. “I’m glad we met. I believe our meeting is a good thing.”
Gloria leans closer to Matt’s chair and says she’s also glad. “Here’s to building gardens.” She raises her wine and Matt goes, “Hear, hear.”
Cara is sharing wine with Gloria. I am looking still for a chance to make my exit, I am about to say, “On that note,” but instead Matt continues to speak of coincidence and how, “I suppose it’s never so much what brings people together but what we take from it at the time. I mean, every encounter is different, based on when we meet.”
“Timing is everything,” I attempt to be glib, hoping my condescension will get us to move on to something else, all this talk of the how and why and when people meet making me anxious, presenting a prelude for things I don’t want to discuss.
“For example,” Matt says, “if we had met five years ago, you most likely would not have read my poems. My first book was only just out, and what were the chances you were looking to have a garden made then?”
“But now,” Gloria encourages Matt to go on. Cara reaches and pours more wine into her and Gloria’s glasses.
“But now.” Matt touches Gloria’s wrist shyly, then moves his fingers away as if the surface of her skin is hot. “Now, when you have read my work and are looking for a garden, we meet.”
“And even after the confusion with the Zell, we’re here.” Gloria references the Zell intentionally, as a way to remind Cara of the dispute between her and Matt.
Not that Cara needs prompting, her toes continuing to work against my calf, her chair too close to mine as she says of the Zell, “What a disaster that was, Matthew,” and shakes her head.
“And yet,” Matt has no more concern for what happened then, he is excited solely about now, how turning down the Zell led to my offering him a chance to work with Gloria. “And from there,” he says as if the whole thing is a sweet little mystery, “what are the chances for any of this?”
“It’s not about chance.” I find myself arguing despite my desire to leave and say, “We’re here because Cara’s a landscape architect and you are a poet, because I run Colossal and Gloria’s a musician, because I wanted a new garden, because I read your work and invited you to apply for a Zell. It’s all threads in a weave.”
“And not by chance,” Gloria goads, then touches Matt’s shoulder. All this unnecessary touching is beginning to piss me off and I hold up my hands to show that I am without occupation.
Matt says, “It’s true, chance or not, from where things started it’s hard to imagine we’d wind up here.”
“But here we are.” I try and narrow the scope of Matt’s comment and say, “Our sitting together now is unexpected but easily explained. Nothing’s arbitrary. Even the things that surprise us most are set in motion by something we’ve caused to happen.”
“That’s for sure,” Gloria again.
“Right.” I’m growing increasingly uncomfortable and try to clarify my original statement saying that the encounters we have are instigated by deliberate decisions. “I wanted a garden. I met Cara. Cara is married to you. We can trace exactly how things went step by step along the way.”
“Oh, I’m sure we can.” Gloria continues to fuck with me.
I shoot her a look, which asks her to cut me some slack, then say, “When I first met Cara I could not have known she was Matt�
��s wife.”
“Or that you’d become friends.”
“Friends, yes. Me and Matt.”
“And Cara.”
“Right.”
“You could not have known any of this.” Gloria is enjoying herself.
I focus on Matt and say, “When we first met we couldn’t have known we’d wind up in the studio putting five of your poems to music. But we can see how it happened.”
I shake the ice in my glass, I do not want to go down this road at all and am hoping Gloria will let things end here, but she can’t and says again, “Because of the Zell.”
“The Zell,” Cara repeats, sounding mordant.
Gloria is obviously pleased to see me struggling. My head is starting to ache as I reply, “Not just the Zell. The Zell was a mistake. Was my fault. I was hasty and didn’t mean to cause trouble.”
“It’s not your fault,” Cara wants to assure me.
I am starting to think if any of this is to be resolved I need to be more direct and say, “But it is my fault and now you two are bickering and that’s no good. Your marriage is a significant achievement, while the Zell, the songs, and whatever else is irrelevant really and nothing for you to be fighting about. In the grand scheme nothing else matters but the two of you.”
Cara is puzzled by my statement and asks what it is I’m saying, exactly. I want to quit talking and attempt to do so by groaning loudly and asking in turn, “How did we get onto this?”
“Matt was commenting about the coincidence of your meeting,” Gloria remains amused as she offers her reply.
“Okay,” I frown once more. “All I’m saying is, having gotten to know the two of you, I realize your marriage is what matters. What you have makes me jealous.”
“Are you jealous, Eric?” Cara pounces on the word.
“Envious,” I try this.
Matt addresses my choice of words as well, asks what I have to envy given how I don’t believe in marriage. I answer, “It isn’t that I don’t believe. I can imagine many ways that marriage works. Yours works.” I try again to reinforce; I am desperate to have Matt and Cara reconcile so I can bring a close to this craziness and get back to my life. “The fact that I personally have failed does not disprove love’s existence.”
“But we’re not discussing love,” Gloria corrects me. “We’re discussing marriage.”
At this everyone laughs. I am hoping that’s the final salvo, but Gloria won’t let go and questions me specifically as to my advocacy of open relationships and the supremacy of individual needs. I reply, “That was a long time ago.”
“You don’t feel that way now?”
“I feel individuality is essential to any relationship,” I answer this way and admit in terms of open marriage and loving freely that I made a mess of this myself. “And to be honest,” I find myself saying, I try to stop but it’s too late as I stare at Gloria and confess, “I would give all that up, the open involvements and easy connections, to have one great love.”
“Really?” Cara exhales.
“And yet at our dinner,” Matt reminds me.
“At our dinner,” Cara, too, is eager to hear what has caused my conversion.
I attempt to qualify my statement and say that I meant, for purposes of this conversation, I would exchange one great love for the rest, though Gloria remains relentless, a thorn, as she picks apart my words to argue, “You’re assuming great love can’t exist in an open relationship.”
“I didn’t say that.”
“And what if there’s no such thing as one great love? What if love’s greatness isn’t a constant?” Gloria continues to screw with me while Matt, too, is ready to jump in.
Emboldened, Matt surprises me by asking as follow-up to Gloria, “What if love is not eternal but rather finite? What if the love we have to share ebbs and flows over time, spreads like water so that what was once a great liquid pool winds off in other directions? What then?”
I am near panic now and stammer out some such thing about love as the only constant and how it’s people who weave in and out, but this comes out all wrong and here Matt, in reply, leans into the table in such a way as I can already predict what’s to come and as I need to stop, the thing he’s been leading up to all along, heartened by poetry and booze and the heaviness in his heart caused by Cara’s distance, the hollow ache he as a poet needs to fill, he can’t hold back though I am desperate to stop him, I am about to reach for my whiskey and purposely spill the bottle, topple everything, make sure Matt doesn’t go on, only I am too slow as always, a count behind the beat as Matt looks across at Cara and me and asks, “What if, for example, I’m in love with Gloria now?”
He says this so assuredly, so matter-of-factly, that we all freeze and then begin to laugh even harder than before. We are laughing still, the four of us, so hard that Cara has to catch her breath and all but shout over the rest of us to say that she and I are having an affair. Oh how we laugh at this, too. How funny it is, the suggestions from both of them, the things now said at last.
•
I am the first to stop laughing.
Matt gulps at his drink, which I am sure now must be water. He waits until Cara is no longer laughing before asking the same as in the car, “So what happens next?”
I pretend I don’t know what he means and ask for clarity, but Matt has turned from me and repeats his question to Cara. “What now?”
“Matt,” Cara says his name softly.
For a moment we all wait. With just these few words Matt has directed us to where the evening feels destined to go. No longer as drunk, adrenaline administering to his sozzled state, he looks to me as if I alone have the answer. I don’t, of course, but I get up from my chair just the same and go and kiss Gloria hard on the mouth.
In the moment I am perfectly clear as to why I do this, though even the explanation I give myself is crazy. I want to put an end to all, to make a statement and clarify where things actually stand, but my action is clumsy and what sort of reaction do I expect? Maybe I’m thinking Matt will stay in his chair, will gauge from my kissing Gloria the folly and futility of his own claim, will come to his senses then and return to Cara who I also hope sees me kissing Gloria as clarification and proof about us.
For her part, which is critical, Gloria lets me kiss her. It is only after we finish, after she has warmed to me and given me more than I expect, her mouth open and directing mine to where I almost lose my focus and forget where I am, only then does she release me, and, smiling in a way I wish she wouldn’t, as I know exactly what she plans to do and show me, how if I love her it has to be this way and on her terms, she gets up and goes to Matt.
In his lap she sits and kisses him. Matt moves his arms, opening, receptive, taking all that is offered, and settles his arms on Gloria’s back, allows himself to be kissed then kisses in turn, he shifts his hips so that Gloria can sink even further into him. They are as this, entwined and tender, together before us so that when I look away to find Cara, I expect she will be livid. Sure, yes, she is guilty of having slept with me, more than once, and mistakenly we both have professed our love in a babble corn sort of blurting out though neither one of us meant it. I assume this will be the reckoning, a healthy dose as Cara will howl and Matt will stop himself any second now, realizing there are lines drawn, which already he has crossed and should not go any further, while Cara will cry “Enough!” and dismiss all that has happened to date as a temporary madness.
Instead she comes and stands in front of me, begins to reach and draw me closer, is eager to kiss me, too, and what is this now? I have done as much before, sure; I have had sex in groups and gatherings, have played in places where managing my desire was not a concern, have had no misgivings and enjoyed myself even when the manifest in hindsight turned out to be something different than I thought going in. With Lidia I was arrogant, I could not handle what I believed, I lost my way and never really recovered. Here, though, I hope to benefit from my experience, I will call time-out and champion cle
arer heads, for Matt and Cara’s sake, as they deserve to know what I have learned, that there is no taking back the things we do, and such decisions as pertain to the urges of the heart should be embraced with a certain caution.
Oh but I am a dog as Gloria knows. I am anything but cautious, I am without prudence the way a fish lacks lungs. Here is Cara in front of me, her curves and shape and skin so warm I can feel the heat. How hot is she, and don’t I know? Our sex before has been entirely raw and unrefined, brutal and vanquishing, somatic as cell to cell we engaged and do so now as Cara leans in and I kiss her flush, my hands already sliding up beneath her shirt, her hands on my hips looking for their own point of engagement.
Gloria has moved from Matt, she has left his lap and brought him standing so they are embraced and kissing not three feet from Cara and me. What a puzzling mix we are, what a queer temptation and the manner in which I am expected to sort through it all. This is not free love for me, not in the sense that I have taken to it before, as I would prefer Gloria step away and be with me. I am not accepting and in no position to be offering, and yet the further we go the harder it is to remember all that, to focus on what may be of concern, until I can’t help but give into the moment, the tug-pounce-howl, I am liberated against myself, I am taken in and gone.
Chapter Seventeen
What follows is just that.
I spend two days writing straight through at every hour. The story is nearly complete. It is different than what I saw coming and I want to get it down while it’s still fresh.
Cara stops by late the next day and we talk. I do not know what to expect and am relieved to find she hasn’t come for any reason other than to let me know she’s okay. I give her the chance to say whatever needs to be said, I am understanding when she tells me it’s too soon for her to know what last night means long term, though she does apologize for ever saying that she loved me. Somehow she thought the claim was necessary. I understand and joke, “Novice’s mistake.”
Liars Page 15
