by Sara Levine
“I’m through with that job. I wouldn’t work there if Nancy paid me. You know what I mean.”
“Well, that’s what I thought.” Rena grew quiet and began to pick at the callus on her thumb. “Do you remember when your Treasure Island thing started, and you kept calling in sick so you could shop for a blouse with a lace jabot?”
“A few times I blew it off, but I hardly think—”
“That’s when I first subbed for you. It’s not like I tried to move in on the job. And I want you to know, when Nancy called and asked for help, I said, ‘I wouldn’t dream of it, what if she’s thinking of coming back?’ I only changed my mind when Nancy goes, ‘Never in a million years—’”
How dare they? Like girls gossiping behind their hands.
“Rena, it’s a dead bush.”
“What?”
“A dead horse. Quit beating around the bush. I said I don’t mind it.”
“All right.” She flinched. “Beating a dead horse. What a cruel expression!” After a pause she said, “How’s Lars?”
“He’s fine.”
As we drank our coffee I studied the lithograph above the table as if I had never really seen it before, which in a way I hadn’t. It was a boat and a sunset, but the wrong kind of boat—two lovers drifting in a canoe.
Rena reached into her enormous filthy Turkish Kilim hand-woven expandable purse.
“Well, here,” she said. “I got the pills you wanted.”
A photograph of schnauzers was stuck to the prescription bottle. “Eddie and Neddie and Nod!” Rena’s eyes rested on the dogs for a moment with deep affection; then her face went blank and she threw the dogs back into that dark hairy pit of a purse. She slid the bottle across the table.
“You’re welcome to these. It’s interesting how animals can relax a person. I haven’t touched Xanax since I began at the Library. I’ll be rearranging the gravel in the fish tank, or combing out the dogs, and I get this extraordinary sense of calm. The feeling can stay with me all day long.” Rena gripped the table stiff-armed as a zombie. “Oh my god! I just remembered! I promised to check on Mrs. Minnelli’s box turtle.”
I slid the check across the table.
CHAPTER 12
The letter arrived, looking innocuous enough, in a small floral envelope. Lars had picked up the mail as we came in, and began to read the letter in the doorway. He froze in the hall like a flamingo. I had to maneuver around him just to put away my coat.
“I’ve . . . ”
Long pause; he continued to read.
“I’ve . . . ”
“What?” I said.
“I’ve just gotten the strangest letter from my mother. It’s bizarre, but I can’t figure out . . . what on earth could have . . . why is she so upset?”
“Let me see it.”
The letter was written in a crazy hand, cursive loping across the page like antelope across the plain; and from what unseen predator?
“I’m baffled,” Lars said. “She’s demanding an apology, and yet I don’t know what for . . . Who do you think—I can’t believe—oh no. Do you think my sister—?”
“Look here, Lars,” I said, guiding his distressed person gently to the sofa. “Your mother called the other day when you weren’t home, and I took the occasion to have a bit of a talk. I’ve never felt drawn to your mother, but some intimacy was long overdue. We had a bout of it.”
When Lars sunk back against the cushions, I explained what I’d long observed as his extremely fucked-up relationship with his mother, citing among other weirdnesses his habit of calling her every single Saturday at one in the afternoon, and speaking to her for precisely an hour, always about the most superficial things, unless for some reason he was unable to get her on the phone, in which case he insisted on calling her at the same time on Sunday and plodding through his dreary conversational routine then. This mode of communication, which he stubbornly preferred to anything more natural and spontaneous, not only disrupted the easy artless flow of my weekend life, but perpetuated the false relations he’d always had with his mother, a weak-headed but controlling woman whom he’d never risked telling anything that he truly thought, preferring instead to reflect back her own shallow opinions so as to keep himself in her good graces.
This discourse about himself and his mother Lars tried to divert by rising up hastily and insisting that I’d had no right to speak to his mother about private things.
“Well, Lars, the only things I told your mother were things that directly concerned her; opinions of her that you, her son, have been withholding; and though you’re upset now—I see your neck is getting that patch of red it always does when you try to suppress a true emotion—once you calm down, you’ll thank me for bringing some emotional honesty into your life.”
But Lars, who has never been a genius about feelings, accused me of calling up his mother to make trouble. This was a terrible distortion, since his mother had in fact called me.
“‘Well,’ she says, ‘do you think Lars would like a sweater for Christmas?’ ‘What kind of sweater?’ A holiday sweater with fifteen different colors in a crisscrossing acrylic design—but that’s not the point. So I say, ‘Look, I’m neutral as Sweden on the subject of this sweater, but I do happen to know that Lars has a drawer full of acrylic sweaters you’ve given him that he never wears; and it’s not lost on him that you always give his sister more expensive gifts such as Cheese of the Month Club and electronics.’ ‘Electronics?’ she says. ‘That iPod Shuffle,’ I remind her. ‘And also, some year before that, a clock radio.’”
Lars’s frantic mind could not absorb the details as I repeated them.
“Listen to me. You don’t know my mother. My mother can’t bear to hear that stuff! My mother doesn’t go in for honesty! What were you thinking?”
“Lars, you underestimate your mother. She’s not a little old lady with a bone china heart. Your family could stand to tell her the truth about all kinds of things.”
Lars stared fixedly at a pile of index cards I’d left on the table, but it was clear he wasn’t reading them. “At least, by lying a little, we’ve always managed to get along.”
“Lars, I know that letter of your mother’s is a good thing. The first honest exchange in your family ever and the start of authentic relations. I saw she called you a ‘spoiled brat’—and that seems harsh, but can’t you feel the air getting clearer?”
“She called you a spoiled brat,” Lars said, fingering the letter.
“Really?” I insisted on checking it.
CHAPTER 13
I put your stuff in the basement,” Lars said. “I didn’t know if you’d be taking it to your parents’ right away.”
Yes, Reader, Lars had put all of my things into boxes and moved them into that infernal part of his apartment building known as “the cage,” a floor to ceiling metal box on the basement level, near to the laundry room, lit by a solitary bulb streaked with dead bugs. Lars didn’t store any of his own things there; the overhead pipes dripped incessantly. I stood in a parallelogram of light on the hardwood floor, looking him in the face, pluckily enough to all outward appearance, but inside, miserable.
“Well,” I said, “did you put your heart into storage too?”
He didn’t answer this directly.
“I’ve got a key, but it would be better if you called the landlord.”
“Is this it, Lars? Aren’t you going to tell me what went wrong? Where’s the big scene? Where’s the show-down?”
“I don’t want a showdown. I have no interest in fighting.”
What kind of sad sack has no interest in fighting, I asked him. For an instant I sat below deck with the squire and the doctor, a bottle of Spanish wine and some raisins before us, Captain Smollett issuing forth commands. It would be pleasanter to come to blows. Now, sir, it’s got to come to blows. What I propose is to take time by the forelock and come to blows some fine day when they least expect it. Lars wouldn’t fight because he was afraid a fight would make him con
front the truth about himself. And so, out of love, I refused to move out.
“Then what did he say?” said Rena when we met at the coffee shop.
“‘Today would be good,’ he said, but I’ve got several appointments I need to keep and no desire to disrupt my schedule because his royal Larsness asked me to. He can take the sofa, if my presence really bothers him.”
“Wow,” breathed Rena.
“I’m pleased with myself for refusing to cave in to his request. You should come on over after this.”
“Oh no,” Rena said. “I couldn’t—”
“Why?”
“Not if it’s his place. You know. I think it would be awkward.”
“Rena, it’s our place! Don’t be ridiculous.”
I was dying for Rena to see how I had begun to enjoy Lars’s apartment. My stuff was in banana boxes, but I made use of every thing of his in sight. I wore his favorite bathrobe uncinched, the tie dragging across the dusty floor. I slathered myself with his sensitive skin moisturizer, heated his organic marinara in the microwave and splattered the sauce, used his electric razor and didn’t obsessively clean out my hairs.
“Look, are you coming or not?”
“I can’t,” Rena said. “Between The Pet Library and the pet-sitting, my schedule is crazy.”
“I’m sorry to see you so distracted.” I pushed the check across the table.
When I got back to the apartment, the phone was ringing. Naturally I pounced on it, thinking it might be Lars.
“Is Lars there?” a woman trilled.
I knew her voice: Chelsea, whose luckless experiences with boyfriends Lars had often, with too much sympathy, detailed.
“You have the wrong number,” I said.
“Do I? Is this seven five three—”
“Did you say Lars? Or Louse? Or Lies?”
Then I unplugged the phone—and kept it unplugged, except for when I wanted to use it.
I’m not going to relate every detail of the siege. It was tiring, even with the advantages of the healing sessions, which increased my stamina, and made me think I could hold out forever, until the day when Bev Flowers stopped me in the outer room, by the serenity fountain, and asked me to pay off my balance. “Well, here’s the awkward thing,” I told Bev. “It’s Lars who’s been loaning me the money for healings, but now he went and changed his ATM number.” “I’m sorry to hear that,” Bev said, and that was my last alignment. In the end, Lars chose a cowardly route and called my mother, who could be trusted in a pinch with almost anything. She surmised that the affair between Lars and me was over and recommended that my lingering in the apartment be stopped. In her careful, experienced way, she took care of the peskiest details, even renting a van and helping me to pack.
“Lars, don’t make this awkward,” I said when it was almost time for me to depart. “My mom’s outside. Richard is a good bird and I want you to keep him as a souvenir of what you and I had together.”
We were standing in his living room, one of us with a calfskin bag jauntily slung over her shoulder, the other looking rumpled and depressed in relaxed fit khakis. I wanted him to take the bird, but in no way feel he was doing me a favor.
“Well, if you won’t take him as a gift, then take him to square the count. I’m sure I owe you something for these months, and he’s the only thing I’ve got that’s worth anything.” I shifted the bag on my shoulder.
Lars looked at the floor and shook his head.
“It’s funny, Lars, I just got through telling Rena how different you are. I said, Richard’s like our child, Lars feeds him and holds him and plays with him, he would never just sail off like he never knew him. ‘I don’t know,’ said Rena. ‘You’d be surprised.’ ‘Come on, Rena,’ I said. ‘Think about it! Without Lars, whose glasses would Richard peck? I don’t wear glasses since the Lasik!’ And Rena said—”
From the street came the husky belch of a garbage truck.
I changed tack. “Look, I’ll give you fifty bucks if you’ll take the bird now, fifty bucks when I get settled, and five bucks a week for upkeep. You’re a fool if you don’t see you can turn a profit.”
“What in god’s name are you talking about? I don’t want to make a profit!” Lars sank into a chair, whipped off his glasses and buried his face in his hands.
I had seen him do this before—once when his great uncle, three times removed, had had a stroke; and another time when he was peeved at me for not understanding why he’d been so upset that his great uncle, three times removed, had had a stroke (I’d accused him of dramatizing). Then he’d covered his face with his hands for a full minute; now he curled into the posture and remained there, incommunicado, for almost five.
The front door cracked open.
“Halloo?” my mother said. “Oh! Is this a bad time?”
Lars did not remove his face from his hands.
“I came to get the keys to the basement. My goodness, is he all right? Don’t let’s drive off and leave him like that. Maybe I should call his mother.”
“My mother!” Lars said, as if she had thrown a bucket of ice water to break his enchantment. His hands found his glasses, his glasses found his nose; he jumped up and passionately smacked the wall. “Why would anyone call my mother? My mother isn’t even speaking to me!”—and then, as if suddenly remembering his manners, he broke off, excused himself, and went into the bedroom. He closed the door, but very quietly.
“Damn! Do you know how close I was to wrapping things up here? I asked you to wait in the van.”
“I came to see if there’s anything you want me to carry out of the apartment,” my mother replied. “To put in that van.”
Hurriedly I gave her my fondue pot, my hairdryer, Lars’s Foot Fixer, which he never used, the keys to the basement and my calfskin bag, which contained Treasure Island. “Don’t swing it around like mad,” I said.
“I won’t.”
Lars came out from the bedroom.
“Excuse my recent outburst. I can talk again about the bird.”
“That’s quite all right,” my mother said, as if the tiff had been between him and her. “Do you mind if I have a peek at Richard? I’ve never actually seen him.”
“I thought you were going,” I reminded her.
Lars pulled the cloth off the cage.
“It’s big, it’s hot, it’s back!” Richard shrieked.
“Oh my,” my mother said. “Look at you!”
She laid down the things I had carefully balanced in her arms.
“He’s a beautiful bird,” Lars said thoughtfully.
“He’s the most beautiful bird I’ve ever seen!” my mother said. “Aren’t you? Yes, yes. I’m a beautiful bird. I’m a beautiful bird. Yes, I am. I have very large wings.”
“I thought you were going.”
“In a minute,” she said, standing at the cage and inhaling Richard’s musk as if he were a rose garden.
“Why don’t you take Richard out?” Lars said to me—a covertly taunting remark, since Lars was the one who opened the cage. “You need to see you can do it. He’s not going to stay in there all day.”
My mother said, “Oh go on, sweetheart!”
Richard hulked on his perch, a twitchy brilliant mass of feathers. It took me half a lifetime to lift the latch and swing open the door. Even before he lunged I could tell he was going to sink his lunatic beak into my finger. When he did, I screamed and flung him to the floor. “Cheeseburger!” Richard said, flaring his wings. Then he bouldered up my leg and latched onto my hip.
“For godsakes!”
“Hush,” Lars said and removed the bird as if he were quietly pulling a bur from my coat. A demon bur.
“Are you bleeding?” my mother said.
“It’s just a nip,” Lars answered.
“I’ll show you a nip, asswipe!”
“I’m going to wait outside.” My mother gathered the appliances back into her arms, threw the calfskin bag over her shoulder, and opened the door, which had been lef
t ajar, with her foot. She walked away, keys jangling.
“Asswipe,” Lars repeated. “My god, weren’t we, like, in love once? I’m still trying to get my mind around how it all went wrong. Did you ever love me? Maybe you just used me.”
More blathering on in this vein: the downside of choosing a sensitive boyfriend. Good looking, solvent, tried to be sensitive to my needs, but when we broke up, whoa Nelly! It was all about him. Feelings, feelings, feelings; out of nowhere a torrent of emotion as if someone had just turned on the Oprah hose, and then he sidles over to give me a hug.
I shrank from him. “Look here, are you keeping the bird or not?”
He was not.
Later I learned that he had privately nicknamed me “Hamburger Helpless,” owing to my habit of not helping out more around the apartment. But at the time he said nothing about that. We said goodbye, Lars solemn and unbending, me incensed, and then I struggled out the door with Richard’s cumbersome cage in my hand. The bird, shocked by the cold winter air, squawked a little as I hit the street. “Shut up,” I said. It consoled me to think I was draining two-thirds of the life from Lars’s apartment.
“Good for you!” my mother said.
“What on earth are you talking about? Take this psychopath, please.”
She found a niche for the cage in the back, assured me it had plenty of air pockets, and then climbed into the driver’s seat, having already loaded the heavy things.
“Well, we’re off!” she said, as if we were going to sea in a schooner, with a piping boatswain and pig-tailed singing seamen, when in fact we were going to her house, with a freaky, self-righteous, red-eyed, greasy-feathered, clapper-clawed parrot in the back of a rented van.
CHAPTER 14
The move home was a turning point for me. Well, less like a turning and more like a case of emergency in which you smash glass. Even with my post-collegiate trickle of bad-paying jobs, I’d never worried that I’d have no place to live. I’d always thought my parents would subsidize my apartment. A year earlier, my sister had gotten herself into such a credit card mess she elected to move home to get her finances in order. How incredible that Adrianna would slide backwards, I’d thought many times, that she would sacrifice the INDEPENDENCE she had earned by agreeing to not only eat meals with my parents, but to share the same bathroom!
