by Jane Smiley
“I ate some of the cantaloupe, an orange, two slices of whole-wheat toast, and a piece of pineapple.”
Delphine said, “Isabel is a vegetarian.”
“Vegan.”
Everyone looked her up and down.
Delphine said—fondly, Elena thought—“When Isabel was five years old, she came through the kitchen while I was fixing a chicken and she said, ‘God, what’s that?,’ and I said, ‘It’s a chicken,’ thinking that she had eaten plenty of chicken, but she looked at that chicken, and that was that. No chicken ever again.”
“I am an overtly self-righteous vegan,” said Isabel. “My position is the moral-high-ground position.”
“Except around me,” said Delphine, “because I know that all this started not because you knew anything about agribusiness, but because you couldn’t stand the sight of an undressed chicken.”
“It had feet on it. And a neck.”
“It was a good chicken. And it tasted good, too.”
“I’m sure of that,” said Max.
“Anyway,” said Isabel, lifting her chin, “Mom left me a message that she and Paul have decided to go wait out the war at some Buddhist monastery up north, and they are leaving today, and so they are stopping by on their way out of town.”
“Do you think they’ve eaten?” said Elena.
“I’m sure they have,” said Isabel. “They’re on a diet where they have to get certain foods eaten by certain times in the day, and the first time is six a.m.”
Delphine rolled her eyes and got up from her chair. Isabel continued, “He makes her get up at four-thirty so they can get whatever it is cooked and digested. I think it’s organ meats.”
“You’re kidding,” said Charlie, who hadn’t said much yet.
“Kidneys, hearts, sweetbreads, brains. I don’t think I could even open their refrigerator. When I was here last, she was low-carb, but now she’s gone beyond that.”
“Not very Buddhist,” said Cassie.
“I know,” continued Isabel, “but Paul has his own system. He’s got all these students he counsels over the phone. They call him at all hours, too, because some of them are in Australia and France and one is in Croatia. It’s been very taxing for Mom, I have to say, having him get out of bed in the middle of the night and talk some Frenchwoman through an anxiety attack.” Isabel grinned merrily. Elena couldn’t help smiling, though she did like Zoe, as she had told Isabel—who didn’t? Zoe was a mostly good-natured and generous woman, and she was also agelessly and effortlessly beautiful, with a singing gift that no harebrained script or crazy producer had ever been able to dim. Zoe Cunningham could sing any song from “Stormy Weather” to “Happy Birthday” and break your heart every time. Once before this Paul, who had been in the picture now for about three or four months, she had come by to look in Max’s storage room for an old portfolio of photographs that she couldn’t find anywhere else, and Elena had listened to her singing in the bathroom—flushing the toilet, washing her hands, no doubt fixing her hair, and at the same time offering a rendition of “It Had to Be You” that segued neatly into “Bob Dylan’s Dream.” Elena had positioned herself cautiously so that she could listen. When Zoe suddenly opened the bathroom door and there she was, Zoe had said, “Doesn’t that bathroom have great acoustics? I always loved them,” and went past her up the stairs.
In spite of her good nature, though, Zoe Cunningham was irritating, or perhaps “maddening” was the word. Every so often there would be “a crisis,” and when “the crisis” hit, she sought advice and support from everyone around her. Everyone around her gathered and helped her weather “the crisis,” always dishing out much advice, for which Zoe expressed profound gratitude. And then the next crisis would come along, and its terms would be exactly the same as those of the previous crisis, and not only had Zoe not learned anything about how to weather this crisis, she didn’t seem to realize that the two crises were similar. In the year since Elena herself had come into the picture, there had been more than five but fewer than ten (well, six—Elena was a counting sort of person) crises. When Paul turned up, Max had said, “Well, finally she’s got her own in-house healer and guru,” but Zoe had called within a couple of weeks, and “the crisis,” as far as Elena could tell, was no different from the others.
None of her crises were career crises. She was a working machine, which Elena had to admire. If she put out an unsuccessful CD or acted in a stinker of a movie, she laughed it off and did something else, like a concert of standards in New York or a mini-tour of Europe singing cowboy songs (she sang “Red River Valley” like you wouldn’t believe). It was only men that made her crazy. Delphine was reserved in these crises; Elena had no idea how Delphine felt about her daughter or anything else.
Isabel said, “I don’t think Paul considers serving Mom his number-one priority. In fact, I think he sees Mom as just another unit in his array of female admirers.”
Elena looked at Max, and Max looked at her.
Charlie said, “I can’t believe Zoe Cunningham is just going to walk through that door in a half an hour.”
Max turned toward Charlie in exaggerated amazement. He said, “Zoe Cunningham has walked through that door thousands of times, and you were here for some of them, so what does that mean?”
“I don’t know. I mean, yes, Max, Zoe was your wife and my friend, but that was twenty years ago. Now—”
“Now you’re separated.”
“I don’t think that’s a factor. I mean—”
“Face it, Chaz. Here you are almost sixty and you have to make up for lost time.” He turned to the group. “You should see Charlie’s suitcase.”
“It’s a sample case.”
Max said, “Charlie decided to live his life backward. He got married at twenty and had five kids. Now the kids are all married and he has twelve grandkids, and he’s decided to live a little.”
“You laugh, but taking advantage of your best reproductive potential and highest fertility is the responsible thing to do. You pass on the optimum genetic material, for one thing. Pregnancies tend to be more trouble-free, and the likelihood of producing a child with problems is less—”
“Yes, ladies and gentlemen, Charlie Mannheim has been boning up on the latest research by the Cato Institute, or is it that Richard Mellon Scaife thing, what’s it called?”
“Fertility decline in women of European descent is—” He coughed and glanced around, then smiled. “Anyway, I’ll be happy to see Zoe. I hope she remembers me positively. I was a little self-centered in those days, I admit. The separation has been a real growth experience for me.”
“What about your wife?” said Cassie.
“Well, in the end she’s glad to get rid of me, she says now.”
“And he is giving her everything,” said Max. “That softened the blow. She gets the house and the money, and he gets the nutritional supplements.”
“Who gets the kids?” said Cassie.
“I know just what you mean!” exclaimed Charlie. “Everyone is in their thirties and married and has kids of their own and all, but every single one of them has an opinion, including my two sons-in-law.”
“Charlie is an outcast,” said Max.
“Well, I wouldn’t go that far. But there hasn’t been a lot of sympathy for my point of view.”
“You vacated your fancy job at PepsiCo just when you hit your earning peak, so I’m sure part of it is that they see their inheritance flying out the window.”
“That wasn’t completely part of the separation. That was more of a health issue. But I’m telling you, these supplements are a growth industry. Junk food is going to level off. Anything geriatric? Hunh! Out of this world. I mean, look at it this way. My grandkids aren’t allowed to drink soda, much less energy drinks. My kids drank free soda all their lives, and now they put soda down in the basement like it’s booze or something. All investments are ultimately driven by demographics. The soft-drink market seems permanent to outsiders, but it isn’t. There’s no
telling what the Chinese market is going to do. The days when you put up a Pepsi sign and they all came running are gone. The market is too splintered. I mean, I told them—” Everyone was picking up plates and evidently beginning to think about other things. Charlie looked around the room for the rest of his audience, Elena thought. “Anyway,” he said, “I’m here. I’ll be glad to see Zoe again.” He glanced at Elena. “Of course, it’s wonderful to see you again, Elena.”
“Thank you, Charlie,” said Elena, picking up her own plate. That was the correct reply. She didn’t say that Simon had only had access to fresh, filtered water and organic low-fat milk. She had met Charlie once, the previous summer, when he and Max had happened to be in San Francisco at the same time. They had all gone to Postrio, and Charlie had talked about his separation for three and a half hours. She said, “You seem happier.”
“You know, I’m glad you said that, because I am—”
She smiled warmly and turned away from the island before he could continue. As she did, Max gave her a friendly pinch on the ass.
Simon emerged from the stairwell. He was wearing a different shirt and pants. It looked like he had shaved everything all over again. He said to her, “May I turn on the TV?”
Everyone looked at him, and there was a long silence.
Elena’s first thought was that this was an odd question for an American boy to ask, especially one like Simon, for whom the TV had often been his only friend. Simon had been a loner for years before he, rather unaccountably, blossomed. That pattern of middle-school life, where betrayal was routine and hurt feelings were intentional and you didn’t know what was going on most of the time, was simpler on television. Simon had always watched television because television was safe and predictable; even when he himself got handsome and graceful and attractive to women (he still didn’t have many male friends), he watched television automatically. But not now, not here.
Because there was the war. The prospect of opening the communications tap and letting the war flow over them made Elena feel tense and ill. She said, “I think we’re all talking, Simon, and the TV would interfere.”
Everyone else was silent, too. Simon said, “So okay. I won’t turn on the television.”
After a pause, Charlie said to Isabel, brightly, as if eager to be part of the conversation, “So—did you see The Hours? I was wondering why what’s-her-name got the Oscar. I didn’t see it myself.”
Isabel said, “Oh, I saw it.” She glanced at Elena in a friendly way. “The weirdest thing happened. Explain this to me. We got there kind of early, because they were showing it in a smallish theater in Cambridge, where my friend was living. We had to sit toward the back and off to the side. I was sitting next to Tara, and there was one seat between me and the wall. Behind Tara, all the seats were full except one seat over toward the aisle. About a minute or so before the lights went down, this couple walks in. They must be in their forties or early fifties. Perfectly normal couple, nice-looking and tall. She’s carrying the popcorn. No seats anywhere by this time, so he squeezes in past me and sits in the seat by the wall, and the wife sits up behind Tara. For some reason, everyone in this section is friendly, and these two are perfectly pleasant, just like everyone else. The movie starts, and we’re watching. About fifteen minutes into the movie, I realize that the guy next to me is making noise, so I shift over toward Tara an inch or so. The movie goes on, and he’s really bothering me. I mean, he’s not touching me or anything, but I can’t stop being distracted, so I turn and look at him. It must have been in one of the California scenes, because this man is all lit up from the reflection of the screen back into the audience, and he is leaning up against the wall on the other side of his seat and crying his eyes out. His eyes are open and I can see glints of light in them, and also in the tears running down his cheeks, and he’s resting his head against the wall like he can’t hold himself upright. So I poke Tara and she looks at him, and then we turn and glance at the wife. She’s just sitting there, eating popcorn and watching the movie with that movie-watching face you get. We look at the husband again. Floods of tears. We look at the wife again. She never looks over at him or seems to notice or have any sixth sense that there’s something wrong. I thought we should report him to the wife, but she was too far from Tara for her to poke her on the leg.”
“I would put that shot in a picture. Especially with the light from the screen glinting off the tears,” said Max.
“Are you sure they were married?” said Cassie.
“We couldn’t figure out if she even realized what was going on. Tara said, ‘Aren’t you so glad those aren’t your parents?’”
Cassie said, “Maybe they’d been fighting on the way to the movie.”
Simon said, “Maybe he had a friend with AIDS or something. I mean, maybe they weren’t married at all, and he was gay, and the movie made him relive the death of his lover.”
“They had that married look. Used to each other. I think women and gay men who hang out together look like they feel lucky.”
“Or maybe his mom had been schizophrenic and he was reacting to that part of the movie, where the little kid realizes something is really wrong and he’s the one who has to deal with it. I thought that was the most affecting part of the movie myself,” suggested Stoney.
“Maybe,” said Elena, “he sympathized with Virginia Woolf’s decision to kill herself because of the onset of the Second World War.”
“But he didn’t try to stop or wipe his eyes or hide his face. He just leaned up against the wall and bawled. What if he hadn’t gotten that seat against the wall and had been out in the middle somewhere, or sitting next to the wife? It was just the sort of seat in a movie that nobody ever wants, but it was perfect for just this guy in just this movie even though he was the last person to get to the theater. So, yes, I saw The Hours.”
Simon said, “I couldn’t get over the nose thing. I guess I didn’t understand the movie, really. I liked that guy Ed who played the gay man.”
“Ed Harris,” said Max. “No manliness problem there. That would be why they cast him as a gay man dying of AIDS. I’ve tried to put him in at least three movies, but he’s always had scheduling conflicts. I saw him do a movie about twenty years ago, Under Fire. He played a mercenary. He was funny and happy and entirely without a conscience.”
“What’s a manliness problem?” said Charlie, leaning forward.
“Ask Elena. It’s her theory of American film.”
“Oh.” Charlie slightly deflated.
“It has nothing to do with your sample case.”
“So, Max,” said Simon, “what’s your favorite movie? What movie do you wish you had directed?”
“Well, those aren’t really the same thing. I have a lot of favorites. There’s the one I wish I had directed, which was One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest. There are all the ones I love but couldn’t have possibly directed, like Pennies from Heaven and Ashes and Diamonds and the Judy Garland version of A Star Is Born. There are my Hollywood favorites and my non-Hollywood favorites.”
“Hunh,” said Simon. Then he added, “So what was it like to win the Oscar?”
“You know what?” said Max. He leaned forward, a playful look on his face.
Elena thought how much she enjoyed watching them interact. She did not think that Max was going to be the father Simon had never had, but she did think that it was positive for Simon to know Max. She would go that far.
“About two weeks before the Oscars that year, I was driving out in the Valley, by Middle Canyon, you know that area? A dog bolted out of a driveway to my left and ran across the road. I just saw him out of the corner of my eye. I swerved right, and my tire went down over the rim of the pavement. When I turned the wheel to come back up onto the blacktop, the wheel jammed, and the car went end over end.”
Elena gasped.
He glanced at her. “I didn’t have a seat belt on, and I was thrown under the glove box. Both the roof and the left side of the car were crushed, and
I was disoriented. I kept trying to get the window open by pushing the button, but because I was upside down, I was pushing the wrong direction. A guy showed up who told me to push the button the other way. That’s all I remember about him. The window opened, and another guy pulled me out. I had to go to the hospital for the night but that wasn’t the weird thing, the omen.”
“What was the omen?” said Isabel.
“The omen was that when the car flipped over it landed on the dog.”
Simon laughed.
Isabel looked a little shocked. Max said, “So I was convinced that, because I survived, I was going to win. When I won, I wasn’t very surprised.”
“I don’t—” Elena was saying, but then the front door opened and there was Zoe Cunningham, and everyone turned to look. Behind her, Paul, who had a bushy beard and was thin and catlike from years of doing yoga, smiled. Zoe seemed to spring into the foyer in a way that reminded Elena that once, in her stage act, she had entered by leaping from the wings almost halfway across the stage (she had used a trampoline to launch herself). Paul closed the door behind them. Zoe dropped her handbag on a table and swept toward them, Elena thought. She was only wearing jeans and a white shirt, with black-and-white zebra-print flats, but she wore it all with such flair that, had she worn it the night before, she would still have appeared on the best-dressed list. What you could not get used to, Elena thought every time, was that face appearing suddenly near you, and her hair, swept up in a luxuriant bundle and pinned with careless expertise at the back of her head.
“We’re here!” exclaimed Zoe. “You wouldn’t believe the traffic. We should have come over Mulholland, I guess, but we came by the 101. Hi, Max. Hi, Ma. Isabel! Oh, you look great, sweetie! Elena, are they driving you crazy? Who’s this?” She put her hands on Simon’s shoulders and looked into his face.
“I’m Simon.”
“You’re so cute! Are you Isabel’s boyfriend?”
“Not yet. I’m Elena’s son.”
“Are you? Stoney! How are you, you should just move in. We should all just move in. Can we move in, Max? Hi, Charlie. I heard about the divorce, but I didn’t hear how to feel about it.”
