“What you need, friend, is a break. You’ve been working too hard and you can’t think straight. You know how in baseball, sometimes a hitter will just miss everything sometimes? Game after game? He’s thinking too much, right? Going after every pitch, getting desperate. Sometimes you gotta park your keister in the dugout.” Allen jumped up. “All right, you’re making me feel guilty cleaning up this slop by yourself.” Allen started grabbing the beer bottles with loud clanks and stacking them along the windowsill in a kind of parade. The afternoon sun made them glow amber. It looked something like a monument.
Milo didn’t care to ask how many days, or hours, that parade of booze represented. But Allen seemed spirited, not woozy or slurring, so that was something, anyway.
In short order they had the place spiffed up and already smelling better, as Allen hauled the trash out to the garbage cans outside.
Milo wandered the apartment in the meanwhile, pausing by the piano. Allen’s melody for “Love Me, I Guess” was propped up on the stand, with more notations and markings. He’d been fiddling with it, but from what Milo could tell through his squinting, not so much it would ruin his lyrics, which didn’t so much exist yet anyhow.
Allen banged open the door. “Aw, leave it alone for now, Short. Grab us a couple beers from the icebox and let’s dig into those sandwiches.”
Allen flopped onto the sofa and tossed his sandwich on the low oval table in front of him. “The wife wouldn’t stand for eating out here, but we’re bachelors far as I’m concerned.”
“So long as you clean up after yourself. No rule that says a bachelor, even a pretend bachelor, has to live like an alley cat.”
Milo felt strange eating out in the living room. Even at his own place he didn’t do that, though he supposed he could. He could eat in his bed if he had the notion. Milo smiled to himself.
“What’s so funny?” Allen asked through a mouthful of pastrami.
“Just that in my own place, I’m still living by my mother’s rules. Not that I want to throw my old food around like this other schmuck I know, but I always sit there at my tiny kitchen table by my lonesome.”
“You’ll get used to it, at least until you get married and the missus will tell you what to do. But I forgot, Mr. Milo ain’t never gonna do that.”
“Didn’t say that.”
“Too bad the young lass at Passover wasn’t your type, or we’d have found out for sure.”
“I never stood a chance, not that I wanted to stand a chance,” Milo added, pointing at Allen with his beer bottle before taking a cold swig that seemed to flood every corner of his sweaty, sticky self. Before Milo knew it, he’d glugged half of it down. “Anyhow, she’s got a fella that her parents don’t like much.”
“That’s a rough thing, being in love when people don’t approve.”
“You’re sentimental all of a sudden.”
“It’s all these love songs, I guess. They get to you after a while.”
“You speak from experience, eh? Your people didn’t like Dorothy?”
“Wasn’t Dorothy.”
“Oh. Right.”
The beer and the heat settled over Milo same as a heavy blanket. He leaned back on the sofa, after another bite of sandwich and long gulps of the cold bubbly brew.
After a few moments of rare quiet, Allen stood up quickly, walked to the kitchen, and returned with two more beers. He handed one to Milo, settled down next to him on the sofa, and tapped his bottleneck to Milo’s.
“Saw Cole Porter at Elmo’s the other night. His wife was with him. Must be some arrangement those two have.”
Milo closed his eyes. “Yeah, yeah. I’ve heard.” The humming of a fan somewhere in the room lulled him. He sat up just enough to take another drink, thinking of some other subject to bring up. Cole Porter’s unusual tastes were not a subject he much longed to dwell on.
Allen spoke up again. “Girls are too much trouble anyhow. Always changing their minds about something, always wanting more money for this and that.”
Milo had no response to this, and took another drink, glad to at least not be thinking about the song, though he just thought about not thinking of it. Another swig might take care of that, too.
Allen rambled on. “That’s what I like about you, Milo. You look out for me, right? You got me to give up the booze, telling me, ‘You’re embarrassing yourself and the show!’ Remember that? When you picked me up at the jailhouse? But you didn’t hate me for it, either. Looking at me like some of them did, like I was gum on their shoe, like they never got a snootful and raised Cain.”
Milo touched the cool bottle to his face. “Well, you’re a pal, Allen. We all trip up sometimes.” Milo chuckled as Allen slumped sideways against his shoulder. “All those beers catch up with you? Speaking of a snootful. Allen?”
Milo craned his head around, trying to see if Allen was even awake. He couldn’t tell at that angle. He jiggled his shoulder a bit to rouse him.
When Allen didn’t react right away, Milo made to get up and untangle himself.
At first, Milo didn’t understand what was happening. He felt something wet, yet oddly solid, on his neck, and reached up to brush away the bug or worm or what, then that something moved, and Milo sprung off the couch, brushing wildly at his collar. He dropped the beer, which clanked against the table and fizzed itself out all over the floor, and Milo’s shoe and pant leg, too.
Allen slumped into the empty space he’d left. Allen was wide awake and alert, but his face was in the process of draining itself white, his pale eyes looking up at Milo with something almost like fright.
It was only then that Milo’s brain pieced together the last few moments and a sickening horror spread out from his chest. Allen had just kissed him, right on the neck, that’s what that was, he’d kissed him and even sucked softly on his skin.
Milo backed away two steps, shaking.
Allen put his elbows on his knees and knotted his hands into his hair. When he spoke, his voice was hoarse. “Please forget I ever did that.”
Milo couldn’t speak. Allen became a stranger before his eyes.
Allen’s shoulders began to shake, and he sniffed, and Milo understood he was crying now, but trying to hold it in, his thin frame quivering with the effort. With trembling hands and bile in his throat, Milo backed out of the apartment door, and ran down the stairs to the street outside.
New York, 1999
As Alex strides across the Midtown apartment, my mind clicks back and forth between the physical reality in front of me, and the memory of Daniel in this space, our place, our home where we once shared bagels and a bed and a life. It’s like a projector toggling between two slides. One, a stranger in this emptied, sterile apartment. Two, my boyfriend and his strewn clothes and the kitchen pass-through counter littered with takeout boxes.
Alex goes straight to the nearly floor-to-ceiling windows and looks down. I find it endearing that he doesn’t try to play it cool. He wears the astonishment as casually as a favorite graying T-shirt. His long wavy hair falls so that I can’t see his face as he peers the many stories down to the street below. In the picture I’d printed out, his hair must have been pulled back, or it was taken long ago. In any case, I’d been surprised when he got out of the cab and approached me with his hand out. He was wearing a T-shirt from a band I’d never heard of, and a dark button-down shirt open over the top of that. He’s tall and lanky, and prone to slouch slightly in the way of people who are used to being the tallest in the room. With his dark clothing, it gives him the look of a tree bent in the wind.
“Wow,” he says. “I feel dumb for not bringing a camera.”
“We can get you a disposable one. I have one somewhere, but I’m pretty sure I packed it in a box.”
Alex scratches his head and looks down, his first sign of self-consciousness. “It’s not some kind of fun vacation, though, I know.”
“Don’t worry about it. You can want to have a camera. Maybe we can catch a show, since you came all this w
ay. I can get us tickets to Fosse. I’ve seen it before, but I never get tired of it. Or there’s a revival of Kiss Me, Kate.”
Alex still faces the view, which isn’t spectacular or anything because we’re not all that high up by Manhattan standards. But everything is new for him here. A view of a brick wall would be novel. “I don’t want to sponge off you,” he says. “I’m doing that enough.”
“I already believe you’re not a fortune hunter, so please stop trying to convince me. It will just make the both of us feel more awkward than the situation already calls for, and I don’t know about you, but we’ve got enough awkward to last us a while, right? I asked you to come, and if I suggest something expensive, we’ll call it book research. I don’t mind, I’m happy to do it, but I don’t want to make a big deal of it. It embarrasses me as much as you, if not more.”
“Is it? Book research, that is?”
“How do you mean?” I ask, sitting down on a kitchen barstool.
“Will you put it in the book, then? If my mother is his child? If Vivian…had anything to do with the song?”
It hits me hard, then, that these two projects I’d managed to demarcate in my head—Vivian and my grandfather and his voice, and then there’s the book—were not exactly so separate after all. Though I’d bet the whole company this is not what Naomi and Uncle Paul had in mind when they set this ball in motion.
“Eleanor? Did you hear me?”
“Let’s just see if it’s true first. One thing at a time.”
Alex nods and picks up his bag, moving into the bedroom, which I’d pointed out when we first crossed the threshold. He could have argued with me, he could have insisted I answer directly, but instead he chooses to give me some space. Not for nothing that I want to help him. He makes it easy to want to help him.
I have to smirk at the irony. I’d taken on this project to protect Grampa Milo. I was supposedly making a stand for dignity, and then I go and dig up a love child and my grandfather’s song lyrics in someone else’s writing.
I trace a pattern in the granite countertop with a ragged, bitten nail and wonder if Naomi’s guy would have dug up the same information anyway. It wasn’t anything remarkable, what I did. I interviewed the son of his late collaborator, is what started all this. Anyone would’ve have done the same. Maybe Jerry Allen wouldn’t have mentioned his theory about Vivian, though. He seemed to be telling that story specifically to Milo’s granddaughter. Surely he would have had chances to tell that story over the years, and he never did.
If only. If only I’d never freaked out at that Bed-Stuy interview, if only Daniel hadn’t broken it off. I’d have been working away in my career like always and if anyone approached me with a book I’d have waved them away: too busy. Going back further: if only Daniel had never flirted with pretty little Moira, I could have relaxed around him, trusted him, given him whatever he thought he needed, so that he didn’t leave me. So he won’t decide to move away to California if I can’t come through with enough eye contact to make him stay.
I haven’t called Daniel. He hasn’t called me. He also hasn’t popped up anyplace unexpectedly. It’s as if he has declared: your move. Though I miss him, I haven’t made that move. I realize now I probably won’t. My heart clenches against my will. After all, this is my doing. I could rally for him. I could form myself to his expectations and do away with the loneliness, the absence of him, this person who knows me. I’m choosing not to. I’m choosing not to change myself just because he thinks I should.
Alex clears his throat from across the room. I raise my hand to acknowledge him, but my eyes are blurring at the countertop, the tiny specks in the granite beginning to swirl with my concentrated staring.
Objects never care whether you stare back, which is what I like most about them.
I glance past Alex at the bedroom. Through the open door, I can see that he has opened his big suitcase and removed the contents of Vivian’s box, arraying them on the duvet.
“You hungry?” I ask. “We can go out for a bite. Or get some delivery.”
A shrug, and somehow he manages to toss his wavy hair away from his face in a way that looks nonchalant and masculine. “I had a bag of pretzels. I can hold off.”
“I feel bad for dragging you here and then the first thing we do is shut ourselves into an apartment…”
“Well, like I said, this isn’t supposed to be a fun vacation. I’ll save my pennies and pay my own way another time. That will be more fun, anyway.”
“We’re not going to talk about money, I thought.”
“Right. Never mind.”
When I lived here with Daniel, and for the brief time afterward alone, the bed was never made, except for maybe the duvet tossed up over the hills and valleys of rumpled sheets. When I moved out, I washed the sheets and smoothed it out so potential renters wouldn’t think the place looked gross.
So even though I know this used to be my apartment and my bed, it looks so foreign all straightened up like this that I easily toss away all thoughts of Daniel and focus on what’s really here, alive and tangible.
Alex hovers near the bed as I sit down slowly trying not to jostle the objects, like they’re sleeping and might be disturbed. There are playbills, the aforementioned steno book, its edges curled with age and careless storage. Yellowed news clippings and black-and-white photographs stare up at me from the bed. In the center of the array as if in a position of honor is an open book, a pressed flower crumbling on its pages. I start to touch the flower but my hand freezes midair, because I have just pictured the whole thing disintegrating. Instead I crane my neck to see the book’s title at the top of an open page. It’s Gone with the Wind.
“Was the flower always in there?”
“Yes. I leafed through the book in case there were mementoes in it, or notes. That was all I found. I think it’s a pink rose.”
An image unbidden leaps to mind, of my grandfather in his fedora, handing a bouquet of roses to Vivian, or maybe pinning a corsage onto her dress. It could have come from anywhere, though. She could have plucked it out of a garden and taken it home.
As I extend my hand for the notebook, I see that I’m trembling. I snatch my hand back. “Maybe we’d better eat. I’ll go order.”
It’s an odd time of day to eat, so the delivery won’t take long, I know. Still, there’s time now to be filled, and no clear goal, as I’ve decided I can’t open that notebook yet. We return to the brown couch, half-covered by a throw blanket to obscure its wear and tear, and in my peripheral vision I sense the box growing larger, like something out of Lewis Carroll, until it fills the apartment and crushes us against the window.
I’ve left the TV, but there’s no cable service, so there’s nothing to watch, as I explain to Alex.
He shrugs that off. I offer to get him a beer, because I may not have planned very well to feed him lunch, but I did stock the place with basics like bread, butter, and beer.
Obtaining the beers only eats up two minutes, and so we both stare out the windows, from the opposite ends of the couch.
“It looks like rain,” I finally say, glad that the sky has provided me with conversation.
“Hmmm. It rained at home yesterday. Maybe those are the same rain clouds.”
“So how is it you could leave so easily? I thought it would take some time to … untangle, from work.”
“Ah. That. Well, see, there’s this assistant director everyone likes better. His name is Kevin and he is a musical theater kid from way back.”
“Would this be the work nemesis you mentioned in email?”
“Oh yes, it would. See, he was almost famous, in a small-town way. He played all the little kid roles in local productions all over West Michigan. You needed a kid, you found Kevin. The King and I, The Music Man, Fiddler. And of course, Sound of Music. Everyone was happy as hell to let him take over.”
“Can I ask you a stupid question, then?”
“Those are my favorite kind.”
“How did you end
up in the job if you don’t sound like you even like it, it doesn’t suit you, and you say people don’t want you to succeed?”
“I fell into it, I guess. My band had just broken up, and the record store I was managing closed, and the previous guy had been basically casting all his girlfriends in all the good parts until it pissed off the wrong people. Which actually wasn’t so bad for the theater, because he seemed to really like screwing talented people. Anyhow, he left abruptly. Kevin hadn’t materialized yet, I think he was still in college. So they were up a creek kinda, and I offered to do it. Then I was swamped with work and trying to figure out all the stupid logistics of running a community theater, which I didn’t know a damn thing about, and then they hired this Kevin guy. To ‘help’ me.”
“Where’d they get the funding?” I know this much from the family business, to always wonder where the money comes from.
Alex snickers and takes a pull from the beer as rain begins to spatter the window. “I don’t know exactly but they can’t afford to keep us both. They’re waiting for me to fail.”
“What do they have against you?”
“I don’t look the part, I’m not good at sucking up to rich donors. I don’t have the right kind of drama background. I was in a couple plays in school but I didn’t stick with it. You know, I guess I’m waiting for me to fail, too.”
“Why?”
“You said it. I don’t like the job. It doesn’t suit me. But in order to pay rent, and eat, and not have to live with my mother, I need a paycheck of some kind, and for now it’s easier to keep working than it is to try and find something, because what, I’d work at Walmart as a greeter?”
“Do you have a degree?”
“Sociology,” he answered, a wry smirk unfurling. “Very useful. So, tell me your life story now. It’s only fair.”
“First, there’s one burning question I must have answered.”
“Yeah?”
“Your band’s name.”
He turns to face me, one lock of hair over his face until he rakes it all back with his fingers. “Tweeney Sodd.”
Vivian In Red Page 23
