Contrary Motion

by Andy Mozina

  We skate south with the brisk wind mostly at our backs toward a huge postcard of downtown stretching from the Ferris wheel of Navy Pier to the Sears Tower with the Hancock anchoring a massive cluster of buildings in the center. Sand blows across the path, making tiny dunes on the other side, and occasionally the lake splashes against a cement wall and sends water under our skates. Bicyclists pass us at freeway speeds. At North Avenue Beach, there’s a snack depot shaped like an ocean liner, complete with twin red funnels on the roof, blue railings, and portals. We buy burgers and ice cream, then smile at each other and don’t talk much. We skate back north, squinting against the relentless sand-flinging wind. At long last we come to a small grove of trees on a jutting point by the Theater on the Lake, where we commandeer a south-facing bench and rest.

  All sorts of Chicagoans pass by, walking, jogging, bicycling, even Rollerblading: the garb of a hundred nations, a hundred neighborhoods, from shorts to saris, dashikis to nylon bicycle pants. We all seem suspended in innocent civic harmony. It’s the first really nice weekend since winter grayed the city last November.

  “This is great, isn’t it?” Cynthia says, smiling.

  “It is,” I say. “This was a great idea.”

  She takes my left hand. “You’re all right,” she says. “You know that?”

  “I am?”

  “Don’t worry anymore,” she says. “We’re both too hard on ourselves. We’ve got to stop that.”

  “I’m trying not to worry,” I say, and smile. I remember her sheepish smile when she was talking about Anna, and it seems that now we’re showing totally different faces to each other. Things feel warmer between us than they have in weeks.

  And what if now we go to her apartment and try to have sex and I can’t do it?

  “Give yourself some time to get over your father,” she says, her voice a melodic humming under the wind that is parting the hair on the backs of our heads. The fact that she’s said things like this before makes me wonder if she’s using my father’s death as a rationalization for our difficulties as a couple. And maybe this is a half-truth we need until we can stumble our way to something more solid.

  “I know,” I say.

  I remember my father once stood at the edge of the sand at McKinley Beach in Milwaukee, took off his brown shoes and his socks, and exposed his long feet with the badly yellowed toenails, as pale and strange as creatures from the lightless reaches of the ocean floor. I never saw him in running shoes or sandals, ever, and that day he had cuffed his khaki pants and put his shoes and socks into a plastic drawstring bag that he pulled up onto his wrist. He and Bart grabbed an end of our enormous red Coleman cooler, into which Mom had packed half our kitchen, and led the rest of us, toting umbrellas, chairs, baskets, canvas bags, toward Lake Michigan. Soon after we set up camp, Dad passed out in a beach chair for the duration. He always slept at the lakefront. I remember that particular day I ran out of the waves and yelled to Dad to come in the water with us. Mom ran across the sand to shush me. “Please let him sleep,” she said, so emphatically it scared me.

  “I didn’t mean that—getting over it,” Cynthia says. “I’m sorry.”

  “That’s all right,” I say. “I’m not a stickler about grieving, believe me.”

  I’m tempted to tell her about my father’s breakdown and my own fear of unraveling, but my problems with my father and my problems with Cynthia feel too entwined to risk bringing it up.

  She sighs and looks out over the emerald-green and white-capped water, which—bounded at the shore by a retaining wall, not a sandy beach—sloshes up and down more than it rolls in waves. There are a few psychotic jet-skiers in wet suits, braving the still-frigid water, and some distant yachts.

  What can I offer Cynthia in return for her kindness? Even as I feel a surge of warmth and affection for her, my renewed connection with Milena makes it even harder to see things clearly with Cynthia. I feel dizziness gather and I take some deep breaths to fend it off.

  “Are you going to make it, with Whitaker and all that?” I finally say.

  “I don’t know,” she says, trying to keep her hair from blowing across her face. “He’s a manipulative bastard. I was supposed to work on a section of a brief he’s filing, and when I emailed to ask him when he needed my chunk, he didn’t respond. I ran into him and he said he didn’t get the email—said the email server was freaking out on him—and then he said he needed it the next day, which really put me under the gun.”

  “Is it possible he didn’t get the email?”

  “Seems unlikely, but I can’t call him on it. Which makes it the perfect way to mess with me. I have to do well on these plane cases.”

  “He seemed like a good boss for a while, didn’t he?” This is a stupid tack to take with Cynthia, and I don’t know why I’m bringing it up, except that it strikes me as interesting, even mysterious, how people can look so different from different angles.

  “He didn’t seem like a typical guy,” she says. “He seemed to really care about the associates. But I think it was all about getting us to love him, to show everyone he was the cool partner, the one we could trust, or something. I don’t know.”

  “Think that bastard will be brought to justice?”

  “I’m just glad to be getting out of town for a few weeks.”

  It occurs to me that I could take this personally, but I don’t.

  Just then, a man who looks exactly like Osama bin Laden—complete with long, unkempt salt-and-pepper beard, sunken eyes, robe, and headcloth—Rollerblades by. Everyone turns to watch him, and he leans over and really begins to work his arms, skating faster and faster.

  —

  We go to the grocery store to pick up supplies for a chicken and veggie stir-fry dinner. When we get to Cynthia’s loft apartment on Lake Street, I start to worry about how the night will end and begin drinking a little aggressively.

  Her apartment has a lot of exposed piping and ductwork and dangling track lighting. No interior wall reaches the twenty-foot ceiling. The bathroom is a cubicle with a lid on it. On one wall there’s a framed print of Warhol’s Double Elvis, with guns drawn, and the furniture is all fifties thrift-store kitsch and pop debauchery—candy-colored, saucer-shaped, tubular. Near the windows, there’s a high-rise scratching post with several platforms for her reclusive black-and-white cat.

  “How are things going for the audition?” she asks, when we’re at the candlelit table.

  “Pretty good,” I say, though I’m not sure this is true.

  “Really? That’s good. And are you still going out to the hospice?”

  “Tomorrow,” I say. There must be more to be said here, but I’m stumping myself.

  “Is that good for you—right now?”

  “I think it’s more like I can’t say no.”

  There’s a long beat of silence, and then, simultaneously, I reach for my beer and Cynthia reaches for her wine, a coincidence we notice and laugh about.

  “I want you to sleep over,” she suddenly says. “But no pressure.” She raises her palms in a hands-off, no-pressure gesture, but I can’t tell if this refers to accepting her invitation or to whether we’ll try to have sex.

  “No pressure,” I say, mimicking her hand gesture. I smile beatifically, though I don’t mean to.

  —

  Cynthia’s got a 7:50 a.m. flight, and we agree to hit the sack early. I hand off the bathroom to her, and find her cat curled up on the down comforter, right in the middle of Cynthia’s bed. The apartment is drafty and I shiver in my boxer shorts and T-shirt. I could use a shower, but I’m afraid that will put me on the spot as wanting sex. I pick up one end of the comforter and give it a shake, trying to dislodge the cat, which holds down its spot like a brick. “Don’t make me thwap you with a pillow,” I say, picking one up. The cat regards me impassively. “We can be friends, you know. Plenty of mice in my apartment for you to bat around.” Finally I slide into bed, then work my foot under her, and she stands, leaps to the floor, magically she
ds her momentum, and struts away, meowing once over her shoulder.

  Cynthia takes forever in the bathroom. No pressure, I think as my beer buzz evolves into a headache. The bottoms of my feet seem to break a cold sweat. Her apartment is still but for the sound of water coming through the pipes in discrete bursts.

  At long last, Cynthia comes out of the bathroom and walks through the apartment, turning off lights. I hear each click, notice the subtle change of illumination in this space. There’s nowhere here not to be with the person you’re with. She enters the bedroom, wearing a baggy T-shirt and panties and her glasses. She takes off the latter while seated on her side of the bed and puts them on her nightstand. She half rolls to face me, and I half roll to face her. Our noses come closer and we kiss, dryly. She props her head up on her hand, and then I know for sure we’re not going to try to have sex, which brings a relief that’s marbled with sadness.

  “When I come back, let’s just start from scratch,” Cynthia says.

  “We can go back to the beginning,” I say.

  “We can start fresh.”

  This is the dream: to not be the person we are and always have been.

  “It could be great,” I say.

  “It will be great,” she says.

  I look at her with an expectant expression on my face. I think of Milena with a confused ache. I have no idea whether I’ll be true to Cynthia while she’s on her business trip. I feel another rush of dizziness, even though I’m lying down.

  “Yeah,” I say.

  The word feels like a sort of bathtub ring: ever since we returned to her apartment and I started fretting in earnest about a possible attempt at sex, my personality has been leaking down a drain, growing less full, becoming less and less available to me, and this word-residue is all that’s left.

  —

  As I drop Cynthia at the airport the next morning, she enthusiastically charges me with getting a bagel at H & H Bagels when I visit Adam in New York, and I promise I will. We hug tight. Back at my apartment, I shower, practice on the 85P for two hours, then head out to Golden Prairie to meet the new couple Marcia told me about. The day is still overcast, refusing to warm up, but I’m trying to feel good about things—or if not good, at least open to better possibilities, which I hope will minimize my chances of another dizzy collapse.

  I set the harp and my gear against the wall and enter the Great Room, where Marcia is in animated conversation with a couple sitting on a large sofa with massively padded armrests.

  “Matt,” Marcia says, getting up, “good to see you. I’d like you to meet Erin Kael and Malcolm Glazier.”

  They rise to shake hands. Malcolm has a fashionable, stubbly beard, round, wire-rimmed glasses, and a Caesar-style haircut. Erin has sparkling direct eyes and a pointy chin. Both look fit and trim in their Eddie Bauer–type clothes. I feel scuzzy in my striped dress shirt that has tiny wear holes at the collar edges and cuffs.

  We small-talk for a bit: they met at Yale while earning PhDs, and now they teach at Northwestern. Malcolm does complex systems theory in the Physics Department, while Erin is an analytical chemist.

  As we chat, it all comes to me like a cold breeze off a glacier: their large American Foursquare on a tree-lined street near campus; the kitchen stocked with organic vegetables and various soy products; All Things Considered on a stereo with an iPod port; the two kids, in first and fourth grade, literate since age three, alternate between reading Harry Potter novels, playing the piano, and building Bauhaus-influenced structures from raw Legos that are special-ordered from Denmark; a Subaru Outback in the driveway, but Malcolm and Erin walk to “class” and “the department” and “the lab,” where they deal with fascinating scientific problems and mentor obsequious grad students and write papers they publish quickly. Then they run four miles, shower together, and fuck vigorously to simultaneous orgasm.

  It’s the life you should be willing to forgo when you dream your musical dream, but I’ve always thought I would be one of the lucky few who would somehow find my way to it.

  “My degrees are from Northwestern,” I say, feeling foolish.

  Marcia brings her hands together on her knees, glances at her polish-free fingernails.

  “My mother died from cancer when we were living in New Haven,” Erin says.

  “I’m sorry,” I say reflexively.

  “And the hospital,” she continues, “had a wonderful music program.”

  “We were skeptical at first,” Malcolm says, “but I did some research and found all sorts of cool stuff about music and the body. A lot of excellent studies have shown how music releases endorphins and increases blood flow and lowers blood pressure. Very persuasive, peer-reviewed stuff.”

  “But it’s not just physical,” Erin adds. “It’s spiritual, too.”

  “The harp especially,” Malcolm interjects, stepping through Erin’s last word, making the sort of eye contact hypnotists favor. “The harp was hugely important to pre–Christian Gaelic cultures—that’s no secret.” He glances at me and discovers in my thick gaze that much knowledge of the world is a secret to me. “They thought it united the masculine and the feminine—the phallic pillar and the feminine sound box. It’s an incredible symbol of harmony.”

  “Gosh,” I say, “I’m glad I don’t play the bagpipes.”

  “I was actually thinking more in contrast to the violin family,” Malcolm presses on. “The violin, viola, and cello all have the classic feminine, hourglass shape.”

  Marcia breaks in: “What would you like Matt to play for your father?”

  “My mother loved to hear all the great Irish and Scottish folk tunes,” Erin says, “and Dad likes those, too.”

  “Coming right up,” I say.

  I stop in a restroom to wash my hands and gather myself, then proceed to cottage number 8, the room in which Richard, Erin’s father, will almost certainly die. I tell myself I won’t freak out or get dizzy, that, in fact, I am carefully staging myself through an immersion therapy that will leave me inured to death and free from the risk of nervous breakdowns. Leaving my harp and gear outside per protocol, I step in, hunching my shoulders, moving my hands to my stomach as if I’m entering hat in hand.

  To my surprise, Richard is not in the bed but sitting upright in the recliner. Malcolm sits on the edge of the loveseat in the alcove, ready, it seems, to spring forward. Erin stands over her father, with a hand resting on the back of his chair, and I feel like a photographer who has come to shoot a portrait of a patriarch with his daughter.

  He rises slowly, careful of the oxygen lines that travel up his chest, hook over his ears and meet, as natural-looking as a pair of glasses, under his nose. Making firm eye contact, he extends a hand and smiles. “Hello,” he says in a voice that is not strong but is not altogether weak. We shake, his grip firm, his hand cool, and I introduce myself. His face is not too lined; his gray hair is combed back from his forehead in a dashing sweep. He’s got the prototypical old-guy mouth: lipless, prone to gaping, Muppet-like. It reminds me of the last time I saw my father’s mouth, though his lips were sewn shut by then. Richard takes a while to sit down again, and I stand, frozen, wordless.

  “Papa, why don’t you put up your feet?” Erin says fretfully. “We don’t want your ankles to get big.” Above his slippers, Richard’s bare ankles do look somewhat swollen, the skin dry and rough.

  “I’m fine,” Richard says.

  “Okay!” I say. “I’ll just go out and tune and bring ’er in.”

  As I arrange the instrument at the foot of the bed, Erin pulls a chair next to her father. She takes his hand and nods at me to begin. I play “Trip to Sligo” and “Flow Gently, Sweet Afton” before I glance at him. His face has gone slack. At some point he and his daughter have stopped holding hands. When I turn to Erin, she nods at me, like a drama teacher prodding a student from the wings: Keep going.

  I power up “Gilliekrankie” to shift the mood. When I finish this tune, I ask him if he’d like to hear something in particul
ar.

  “How about ‘Danny Boy,’ ” he says with as much sardonic emphasis as his short breath will allow.

  “Oh, Papa,” Erin says.

  Malcolm is a coiled spring on the edge of the loveseat, his elbows on his knees, chin raised as if he’s about to speak, but he’s been that way for about the last ten minutes without a word.

  I consider changing musical genres altogether, but I’m just the harpist, not the conductor. I try “South Wind,” which is slow and beautiful and hard for anyone to resist.

  After I finish, Richard thanks me without looking up and says he wants to rest.

  “Okay, Papa, okay, Papa,” Erin says, soothing him as if he’s just had an outburst.

  “All right!” I say too loudly. “I really enjoyed meeting you and playing music for you.”

  “Thank you, Matt,” Erin says meaningfully as she helps her father out of the recliner. I carry everything out into the hall.

  Just when I’m despairing over not having created Malcolm’s expected harp-induced harmony, a nurse approaches and says a man next door has heard me playing and would like me to come by his room. “His name is Michael,” she says. “He has AIDS,” she adds, like I was maybe planning to have unprotected intercourse with him.

  “Sure,” I say. “I’d be glad to.”

  In cottage 9, a very thin, long-necked man lies stiffly, propped up in the bed. The part in his hair has eroded far down the side of his head, and his long bangs lay sparsely like dry grass over one side of his brow. There’s a raised, purplish lesion at one corner of his small mouth, which seems contracted though his lips are parted. But the most striking thing about him is that his face is much thinner below the prominent cheekbones than above, so that the top half of his face with his large forehead and broad-set eyes seems mismatched with the sucked-in cheeks and narrow jaw. I can’t escape the fact that the air smells faintly of diarrhea. His eyes are a quarter closed and watch me with an uncanny stillness.