The Beautiful Things That Heaven Bears

by Dinaw Mengestu

  Together, we walk around the fountain twice. A spot opens up on one of the benches surrounding the fountain. A few feet away, I can see a clearing in the grass. The couple turn toward the bench, while I head toward the grass. I give them an enthusiastic wave good-bye as we part.

  6

  The morning after my dinner at Judith’s house, I waited anxiously in my store for her to come in. I had prepared myself for anything from a warm, deep embrace to a casual, indifferent air that said all too plainly not to expect more than just that one brief kiss. I kept the invitation that Naomi had folded up and left in my mailbox buried in my pocket. I rubbed my fingers across it from time to time, and with each rub I came to a new conclusion: that the kiss was merely an accident; that the kiss meant nothing; that the kiss had been deliberate and planned. Judith didn’t come to the store that day, though, and neither did Naomi. When I closed the grates at the end of the night, I did so feeling dejected and suddenly abandoned. I told myself that I had no right to expect more, but that was hardly consoling when in fact more was precisely what I wanted.

  The next day was even worse. I turned my abandonment into anger and my anger into pity. I cursed myself for my silly expectations. I thought I saw the situation now clearly for what it was—a case of mistaken identity. I had forgotten who I was, with my shabby apartment and run-down store, and like any great fool, I had tried to recast myself into the type of man who dined casually on porcelain plates and chatted easily about Emerson and Tocqueville while sitting on a plush leather couch in a grand house. The second day passed and still there was no sign of either Judith or Naomi. I lay awake in bed and vowed to forget that night had ever happened.

  I didn’t have to wait long to test my resolve. The following evening I saw Judith, by chance, as she walked up the steps of her house. I was less than a block away when I saw her, and instinctively I began to rush toward her, ready at any moment to yell out her name. I had covered half the distance separating us when I saw Mrs. Davis standing in front of our house, cocooned from head to toe in a blue coat, watching me as I nearly ran to catch up with Judith before she vanished into her home. I slowed down as soon as I saw Mrs. Davis watching me. I took a deep breath and silently exhaled Judith’s name. Had I been saved from making a fool of myself? Perhaps. I didn’t need Mrs. Davis or anyone else to tell me what I looked like chasing after Judith as she walked up the steps of her house. I knew that already, and yet still there it was, regret, fully formed and ready to wash over me as soon as I realized that I wasn’t going to take one more step.

  Abruptly, I stopped walking and fixed myself into a square patch of concrete that forced the crowd of people around me to split as they approached. From there, I watched as Judith fumbled through her purse for keys. I noticed that at that moment, she lost all of the grace with which she usually carried herself. She could have been anybody, I told myself. She could have been a stranger. Both of her hands scrambled desperately through her purse, which was large and heavy enough to throw her slightly off balance. It was cold outside and her frustration was visible even from where I was standing. She had no gloves on and her fingers must have stung with every stab she made. I knew enough about Judith to know that she carried as much of her life with her as possible everywhere she went. She had shown me the contents of her purse once while she was in the store searching for loose change to pay for a package of gum.

  “Look at this purse,” she had said. “I feel like a maniac carrying it around, but I don’t know what I’d do without it.”

  Her purse was stuffed with utility bills, checks, credit cards, passport, keys to her old houses in Chicago and Virginia, a copy of Naomi’s birth certificate and Social Security card along with her daughter’s most recent report cards and immunization forms, everything one could ever need to assert her identity and place in the world. There was something sinister and romantic to it. Part fugitive, part adventurer, she was always ready to drop everything and run on a dime.

  By the time she found her keys the people who passed me on the street had begun to turn around and stare back curiously at me. As they rushed home from the cold I had stood frozen in place for, what? Five, ten, fifteen minutes. Long enough to invite malicious and concerned glances. How was it that I never seemed to understand time when Judith was around? Too fast or too slow, or as in this case, not at all. An hour had sixty minutes and a minute had sixty seconds and the hour could be broken into halves and quarters and tenths and even fifths, and yet none of these parcels of time could be counted on to hold their weight at these moments. Judith disappeared into what I hoped was the warm comfort of her house with a slight nudge of her shoulder and a repositioning of her bag around the crook of her forearm. It was time for me to move on, but when I came to my house I didn’t even pause to consider going in. I walked past it to the end of the corner, where instead of looping around the circle, I turned right onto Rhode Island Avenue—an unexpectedly wide and open road—and continued north until I reached a bar, where I stopped and drank until I knew everyone in the house next to mine had fallen asleep.

  Three days later Judith rang my doorbell at just a few minutes past eleven. I had forgotten what my doorbell sounded like. I couldn’t even remember the last time it had been pressed. When you live alone for as long as I have, you forget your private world is only an illusion created by a door and a key. The sound of the doorbell, harsh and sustained like the shrill cry of an old man, seemed capable of shattering all the windows and glass and tearing down the roof over my head if pressed long enough. When it rang my heart pressed against my chest and stayed there until I caught my breath and reordered the world to allow for such things as guests and doorbells.

  Judith was patient with my coming down the steps. She pressed only once, knowing, perhaps from her bathroom-window view, that I was at home. As I came down the steps I could see her through the octagonal windowpanes on the front door. The dark orange streetlight added a touch of unexpected sadness to the scene. She was blowing into her hands for warmth, and behind her a few stray snow flurries drifted past. Do we plan encounters like this, or do they really just happen naturally? As I took the last few steps I thought of Bogart, with his dame-slapping ways, and the desperate women who came running to him at night.

  When I opened the door Judith’s back was turned to me, her arms wrapped around her shoulders as she watched the falling snow. She wasn’t wearing a coat. She was acting reckless. When she turned to face me she smiled wholeheartedly and pressed the palm of her hand against my face.

  “Cold?” she asked.

  “Freezing.”

  “Then invite me in.”

  We fumbled our way up the staircase, which grew darker as we neared the top floor. Before I opened the door I mumbled an apology about not expecting visitors and the general state of my apartment. I had cleaned it just the night before, but expectations are easier to bear when they’re set as low as possible.

  “I wish I had a coat to throw dramatically on the couch. It would fit the moment better, wouldn’t it?” Judith had just cast a quick sidelong glance at the apartment, noting without apparent judgment the size and condition of the furniture and walls. It seemed enough for her that the place existed, that I indeed had the proverbial roof over my head and did not, despite my obvious isolation, live in a state of sordid squalor. It may very well have been relief that had crept into her voice and relaxed her enough to set us off on this game.

  “I was just thinking the same thing,” I said. “I could go to the closet and get you one.”

  “Can we start all over?”

  “From outside?”

  “No. That would be too much. I can just knock on the door.”

  I went to the closet and pulled out a long black wool coat that my uncle had given me for formal occasions. Judith held the coat up before putting it on and said, “Perfect.” The shoulders, bulge, and length looked ridiculous and yet adorable on her. I could see how as a child she must have been equally precocious and charming, an
entertaining little character who could be brought out in her mother’s oversize clothes to amuse elderly aunts and grandparents.

  Judith went into the landing and waited a few seconds before knocking on the door. When I opened it she blew right past me, flung the coat on the couch, and then collapsed onto it herself. She rested her forearm against her head and closed her eyes. It was a perfect performance.

  Once the experience had settled in she asked, “So, how was that?”

  “Better. Much better. Although I think a little dialogue at the door might have helped.”

  “Like what?”

  “I don’t know. ‘Am I disturbing you?’ ‘Are you alone?’ That sort of thing. How do you know, for instance, that I wasn’t with another woman?”

  “Or man.”

  “Exactly.”

  “I’ll keep that in mind for next time. Anything else?”

  “Where’s Naomi?”

  “Asleep.”

  “By herself?”

  “Tylenol PM. It works wonders. I’m only kidding. All the doors are locked, though, including the one leading to the third floor. A mother can never be too careful.”

  She was slightly drunk. I saw that now. As she spoke, her head lolled unwittingly to the side, and her eyes, in the full glare of the hundred-watt ceiling bulbs, were heavily hooded.

  “Is everything all right?” I asked her.

  She paused for a second and fixed her eyes directly onto mine. I knew the technique. I had seen hundreds of parents do it before with their children in my store. The fixed, stern gaze against which any deceit was supposed to be helpless.

  “Why didn’t you say anything to me the other day?” she asked.

  “When?”

  “When I was standing in front of my door for God knows how long pretending I couldn’t find my keys. You don’t think I saw you standing down the block waiting for me to disappear?”

  I didn’t know what to tell her. She sat there and stared at me with that narrow doll-like head of hers that made her look as seemingly innocent as a child. I wanted to laugh the past six days off, and now that Judith was sitting here in my living room late on a winter evening, everything seemed entirely possible once again. I could fit into her life after all. There was nothing crazy about it. I had the trust and affection of her daughter, and once, not that long ago, I had been a young boy with the greatest ambitions and dreams, guided by a prominent father and distinguished family background. I still had that in me.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “You looked like you were in a hurry and I didn’t want to disturb you.”

  It wasn’t much of an answer, but it was easier than the truth.

  “Forget it,” she said. “I’m just babbling.”

  My eyes followed hers from one corner to the next, catching sight of the spiderwebs hugging the northwest corner and the trail of dust creeping along the surfaces in a steady, unstoppable march.

  “So this is it,” she said.

  “It’s not much,” I said.

  “No. It’s perfect. It’s exactly as I imagined it. You have a great sense of space.”

  “You mean I don’t have any furniture.”

  “That’s just one way of looking at it. I always thought I would live a sparer life,” she said. “I never wanted to be one of those people who had walls and walls of stuff they could care less about. I thought that would be the death of me.”

  “So what happened?”

  “Inheritances. They can kill you.”

  She laughed just slightly at her joke without looking up to see if I had caught it.

  “First it was my grandmother. Most of the furniture in the house came from her. Then there were a few aunts who had no children, a godmother in Boston who I barely even knew, and then finally my mother and father. I’m not sure what it is about me, but for some reason when people are about to die they seem to think of me. I think it’s because they know I’ll never throw any of it away.”

  She smoothed down the loose fabric of the sofa cushion that had puckered around her. It was a hideous couch, with green and red stripes and more than a few unknown stains. There wasn’t a piece of furniture in my apartment that I wouldn’t have traded in if given half a chance.

  “You got anything to drink?” she asked me. “The scene wouldn’t be complete if you didn’t.”

  I pulled a bottle of expensive scotch that Kenneth had brought to the store and never finished from my kitchen cupboard. I had tried to finish the bottle alone on several occasions, but each time it had been obvious from the first glass that any comfort it was supposed to provide would elude me, and so now, four years later, the same half-drunk bottle was still gathering dust inside the cabinet.

  “Stale scotch okay?” I asked her.

  “I don’t know what could possibly be better.”

  I set out two glasses and filled them partially with ice. This was a deliberate act of seduction; I had seen it before in television and movies. There was a direct chain of events that had to be followed: the glasses of scotch and ice led to the couch, which in turn led to the first hesitant kiss of the night, followed by the frenzied passion that came with my hand running through her hair. All I had to do was know how to play the role right: to hold the cups properly, speak eloquently, and carry myself with the assurance of a leading sitcom actor.

  I handed Judith her glass.

  “Cheers,” I said.

  “To what?” she asked.

  “Furniture.”

  “Perfect,” she said.

  We raised our glasses to the air, and we toasted to furniture.

  I sat down on the couch next to Judith. We both put our feet up on the coffee table, bending our knees so that we resembled a pair of children sitting bored and idle. She leaned over and rested her head on my shoulder. All of her exhaustion came through at that moment. Her head didn’t land so much as it seemed to finally relent. She didn’t say anything more and neither did I. I was still holding my glass in my hand, the ice slowly melting into the shallow pool of scotch whose scent occasionally wafted up and stung my nose, when I noticed that she had fallen asleep. It would have been too much to move, to nudge Judith’s head even just an inch from its perch on my shoulder, which at that moment I believed to have been shaped with her head precisely in mind.

  Approximately twenty-five minutes passed before Judith lifted her head on her own. I had counted each minute off on the clock hanging above the stove in the kitchen. Her mouth had hung slightly open the entire time, as if there had been something that she had been waiting to say but hadn’t quite yet found the proper words for.

  “I should get back home,” she said when she opened her eyes. “I would hate to imagine what Naomi would do if she woke up and found that I wasn’t there. Don’t worry about walking me home or anything. I think I can get there safe.”

  “You really like that joke, don’t you?”

  “I don’t have many to choose from.”

  She put one arm around my neck and pressed her cheek against mine. I didn’t know what to do with my hands, so I left them dangling limp at my side for a second while Judith whispered into my ear, “Thank you for being so sweet.” I gave in then and let my arms wrap, just barely, around her waist. All of the tenderness that I had stored inside of me came rushing to the surface of my skin. I bit down hard on my tongue to hold it back. I waited for her to lift her head toward mine, but it never happened.

  She left immediately after that. I watched her from the top of the staircase as she made her way down to the street, and then followed her from my living-room window as she climbed the steps to her own house. We may not have been lovers, but that didn’t stop me from thinking of her as such.

  Naomi was back in my store the next day. I didn’t ask her where she had been, or why she hadn’t come by to see me all week. I told her simply, “You were missed,” which she responded to with a shy smile.

  She came in strapped with books that she hoisted onto the counter by standing on the tips of her
toes. It was the first day of her Christmas break, and she had raided the local library for all it was worth. She opened the bag and pulled out the half-dozen books she had picked to make her way through the quiet winter weeks. Apparently, she had gone exclusively for size. The Education of Henry Adams, Brewer’s Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, The Brothers Karamazov, Plants and Animals of the Western Hemisphere, and an Atlas of the Modern World.

  “What do you plan on doing with all these books?”

  “Reading them.”

  “Even the dictionary and atlas?”

  She shook her head and rolled her eyes at me. She hadn’t learned yet to conceal her scorn for my silly questions, and I know it sounds easy to say, but had she been able to explain her derision, I’m sure it would have had something to do with my adult impulse to place limits on her world.

  “Seems like a lot for one girl to read. How long is your vacation?”

  “Sixteen days, counting weekends.”

  “You better get started, then.”

  “What should we read first?”