Babylon and Other Stories

by Alix Ohlin

  The next morning she got a call from Brian's boss asking if he was sick, which he wasn't. When he didn't come home after work, she didn't call Steve or his parents. She wasn't going to ask anybody else where her own husband was, not in this lifetime.

  A month passed and Brian didn't come back. Kevin practiced daily on the paper piano. He could play “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star” and “Au clair de la lune.” On paper the melodies whispered and tapped, but on the piano, in three dimensions, the sound burst out so strong and plain that he was shocked. A lot of times, when he touched the wrong notes it wasn't because he didn't practice but because the keys were higher and farther apart than in his drawing of them. If Mrs. Tanizaki noticed his surprise or his fumbling readjustments, she didn't say anything.

  “Good, Kevin,” she said softly. “Wrists up. Fingers bent. Don't look at me, it doesn't matter what I look like. Keep going. That's good.”

  Sometimes she rapped against the piano with a little stick, to help him keep time, and this made him feel sick to his stomach. Other times, while he was playing, she disappeared behind him, even leaving the room. He hadn't seen Lawrence for a while, and wondered if Mrs. Tanizaki had to go make Lawrence his sandwiches in the kitchen. These days Rachel wasn't making Kevin lunch anymore. When he got home he'd make it himself in the microwave and eat it alone at the table, the taps of Mrs. Tanizaki's stick still beating inside his ears. His mother would be sitting on the couch, looking out the window at the park, there and not there at the same time. He thought the baby in her stomach was dragging her down; it was round like a bowling ball and maybe that heavy.

  Rachel had decisions to make, had to figure out what to do— about her job, the rent, the future. The words what to do ran together in her mind until they lost meaning and became a chant instead, whattodowhattodowhattodo. At times she felt like she was drowning in air—too thick, it bore down until she couldn't move or breathe. The baby was due in two months. This much she knew: she was going to name the baby Jennifer, she was going to put little barrettes in her hair, she could practically feel the silky skin of the baby's cheek against hers. One day a fifty-dollar bill came in the mail, in an envelope with no return address. She was waiting to find the strength inside her, waiting for it and building it up. In the meantime she rested, and Kevin played piano in his room.

  It was summer and Kevin did not have school. He stayed in his room playing the piano. The apartment was hot and dense. He played “Pop Goes the Weasel.” Rachel was lying down in the bedroom. Then the doorbell rang, and he answered it. It was his father. Kevin looked at him. Rachel had said that Brian was away on a trip, but he hadn't believed her. Maybe it was true.

  “Hey, buddy,” Brian said, “how's it going?”

  “Okay.”

  “Just okay? Not good, not great?”

  “Good.”

  “Good,” Brian said, holding out a plastic bag. “Here, I brought you something.”

  Kevin took it and looked inside. It was a toy truck.

  “Can I come in?”

  Kevin stepped aside, and Brian walked in. Rachel was standing in the living room, rubbing the sleep from her eyes. Each time she went to sleep she seemed to fall deeper and deeper, and it took her forever to wake up. Even the sight of her husband couldn't shake her into action; she stood there blinking.

  “Hey,” Brian said. “I came to see how you guys are doing.”

  Rachel rubbed her stomach. “It's a girl,” she said. “Jennifer.”

  When Kevin closed the door, the sound of it made Brian turn around. He smiled at Kevin. Rachel and Brian sat on the couch, and he did all the talking. It was like he'd been storing up words all the time he'd been away, and when he got home and opened his mouth they tumbled out on top of one another, falling and falling. But the things he was talking about had nothing to do with his trip—baseball scores, stories about his job, jokes he'd heard. Kevin sat down next to him, on the other side of Rachel, and put his hand next to Brian's knee. He could feel the weight of his father's leg on the couch. A while later Rachel went into the kitchen to make dinner and Brian stood there in the doorway, still talking. After dinner, Kevin went to his room and could hear his parents' voices rumbling in a steady rhythm through the walls. With a book and the paper piano on his lap, he turned this rhythm into a song, making it the bass clef to a melody he made up as he went, a tap-tap beat up and down and around the scale.

  In the middle of the night he thought he heard a scream and jumped up out of bed. Standing outside their door, listening, he heard his mother sob. Was it the baby? So heavy that it dropped out of her, ripping her open? “Mom?” he said.

  “Go to sleep, Kev,” Brian said. “Everything's fine.”

  Kevin looked at the closed door. “Mom?” he said.

  Finally she called, “It's okay.”

  He was still standing there, and Brian said, “Did you hear her, bud? Go back to bed.”

  In the morning, they were still asleep when he left for his piano lesson. He drank a glass of juice and ate some toast and walked around the park, green and weedy now. He rang the doorbell at Mrs. Tanizaki's.

  “Come in, Kevin,” she said. “Today I've got a surprise for you.”

  He followed her into the house. Lawrence stood in the kitchen doorway, chewing. When Kevin passed by, he opened his mouth wide and showed him the pile of chewed-up food on his tongue. Kevin stared.

  “When you're finished eating,” Mrs. Tanizaki called, “we'll be waiting for you, Lawrence.”

  Lawrence smiled at him with his mouth still open and his tongue covered with food. His eyes were barely visible behind his glasses and his hair. Kevin sped past him.

  “Sit over here, Kevin,” Mrs. Tanizaki said, pointing to the chair at the back of his room, where Lawrence used to sit chewing his sandwiches. “Where is your book?”

  He opened his backpack and took it out.

  “Open to the last page,” she said. “I want you to learn this piece. This section in your book is just a small part of the piece. But Lawrence knows the whole piece and plays it very well, so I asked him to play it for you. And I want you to listen to it very carefully.”

  “Okay.”

  “Lawrence, are you ready?”

  Lawrence came into the room with his mouth closed and sat down on the piano bench. Kevin looked at his slouching back. All he could think about was bits of food falling out of his mouth and landing on the white and black keys, and when Lawrence started playing he could barely hear the music. He was thinking about the food, and the notes were wooden and dull. He closed his eyes. Lawrence's fingers moved over the piano without ceasing, and he pictured them and made them into his own fingers, and then he was playing and finally he could hear the piano. He heard it without Lawrence in it. And there it was. The notes lined up, partnered and separated and circled, moving swiftly through a clear, empty hall; there were no smells in this place, just a pale and pure background, like water. Then he thought, This is the castle. These are the dancers.

  A cascade, a chord, a castle.

  The music stopped, and he opened his eyes. Mrs. Tanizaki smiled down at him, not at his face but at his hands, and he looked and saw they were balled into fists. Lawrence made a snorting sound.

  “Thank you, Lawrence,” Mrs. Tanizaki said. “Kevin, would you like to thank Lawrence for his performance?”

  “Okay.”

  “Kevin,” she said.

  “I mean thank you,” he said.

  “No big deal. Can I go now, Mom?”

  “Yes, Lawrence.”

  He slipped heavily off the bench and disappeared into the kitchen, where Kevin could hear him opening and closing the refrigerator door, then took his place at the piano.

  “Now, you try,” Mrs. Tanizaki said, opening the book.

  Kevin's fingers moved thickly, sluggishly through the first bars, and it sounded nothing like what he had just heard. He thought about his paper piano and his mother and his father there or not there and his fingers making em
pty sounds on a flat surface and he bit down, hard, on the inside of his cheek. His fingers stopped.

  “It's all right, Kevin,” Mrs. Tanizaki said. “It takes practice. If you go home and practice, you'll be able to play the piece, I guarantee it.”

  He looked at her dark eyes. She was the teacher. He bent his head over the keys.

  When he got home his father was not there. His mother looked dazed, and kept moving her hands over her swollen stomach, from top to bottom, over and over.

  “I don't think he's coming back this time,” she said. “He packed a bag.”

  Kevin set his own backpack down, as if it incriminated him, and put his hands in his pockets.

  “The duffel bag,” Rachel said. “He took the duffel bag this time.” She looked at Kevin, his thin arms poking out of his T-shirt. “Sit down at the table,” she said. “He's not coming back, okay? But we're going to be fine. I'm going to make lunch.”

  She heated up some soup in the microwave, then brought it to the table and poured him a glass of milk. She sat down opposite him and crossed her arms. “How was your lesson?”

  “I'm not going back,” Kevin said.

  “What do you mean? You love the piano.”

  He shook his head. He picked up his spoon and slurped down some soup. Even though he'd had his eyes closed during Lawrence's performance, he couldn't stop picturing his hands moving quickly, unhesitatingly, over the keys, gathering the notes into perfect strands, as Mrs. Tanizaki watched. The two of them sat together at the piano under the pool of light. It was their world, and he did not belong in it. He saw himself walking slowly toward them, a sheet of paper in his hand, and Mrs. Tanizaki didn't hear him; but Lawrence turned and saw Kevin and he was laughing, his head flung back.

  “I hate her.” He couldn't say her name. “I'm not going back.”

  “You really don't want to? You don't like the piano anymore?”

  “I'm not going there anymore.”

  “Come here,” she said. “Stop eating and come here.”

  He obeyed, walking around the table and standing next to her. They looked into each other's pale blue eyes. Then his lower lip, still orange with soup, trembled, and tears slipped down his cheeks. Rachel felt her blood pump in her veins—moving through her, waking her up—and she put her hands on the slight, slack muscles of his upper arms.

  “I won't let you stop,” she said, and her fingers sent strength into his skin. Her voice was the world's warmest sound. It pulled and pulled him until he found himself leaning close against her, and he pressed his forehead to her neck.

  You Are Here

  There were three days left of life in the suburbs; afterwards, it would all vanish. From her bedroom window, Iz could already see it starting to disappear, color bleeding from the edges of parks and elementary schools, asphalt thinning in driveways. This was in August, and all the neighborhood came out at dusk to walk their dogs in the park across the street. When Iz was in her room painting she kept the window open and could hear them calling their pets, names echoing in the twilight, like those of lost children. All the dogs ignored their owners. Off leashes, they danced and spun in the center of the park, barking and biting, threatening to bring or, again like children, come to harm.

  Iz was leaving. School started Tuesday, and then she would not look back; she would never come back, either, except possibly in the very distant future, when she was either rich or an aristocrat. But until Tuesday she had to wait and, today, had to go shopping with her mother. In order to survive their trip to the mall, she was treating it as a sociological expedition, a journey into the heart of America. Also, she was pretending to be French. She would address silent queries to her mother: Please, could you tell me what ees Orange Julius? Eet ees not in my dictionary. Seen through this lens, American culture was fascinating.

  “Izzy, are you ready? Is that what you're wearing to go shopping?” Her mother stood on the landing outside Iz's room, adjusting the straps of her purse and wearing a light blue seersucker dress. She was of a generation that did not choose to leave the house in slacks. She was of a generation that used the word slacks.

  “It's hot, Mom. I'm wearing shorts.” Please, what ees the difference between slacks and trousers?

  Her mother, who didn't know she was French, who thought Iz was from Newton, Massachusetts, sighed and shook her head. “Well, you're all grown up now, so do whatever you want,” she said, in a tone that meant just the opposite. Iz's wearing shorts to a public place and going off to study art against her father's wishes—he thought she should major in business or computer science or both—were to her equally incomprehensible actions. She always sighed and shook her head. And it drove Iz crazy, this failure to discriminate between tragedies.

  Her mother was in her element in the shopping mall; she responded to the filtered light and Muzak like some kind of specialized plant. At home she was mostly quiet and withdrawn, obeying Iz's father's barked, alcoholic commands; she spent a lot of time sitting in armchairs, reading thrillers under isolated pools of light. But once they got inside the mall she drew herself up to her fullest height and took a deep breath. Iz lagged behind, watching packs of teenaged boys pick up teenaged girls. The boys, white kids from Chestnut Hill, were wearing huge, baggy jeans and hundred-dollar sneakers. The girls' hair was sculpted up above their foreheads like a wall of defense.

  “Excuse me, but isn't your name Samantha?” one of the boys said, lying in wait outside of the Gap.

  “No.”

  “Oh. Well, what is your name?”

  At the black map of stores, Iz's mother hummed and pointed. She was wearing a shade of nail polish called One Perfect Coral. Iz had no nails to speak of; shards of oil paint were visible beneath what was left.

  “Now, let's see,” breathed her mother. “We are … here.” She pointed to the red dot labeled YOU ARE HERE. Vous êtes ici, said Iz to herself.

  “And we want to go … here, I think. Is that all right, Izzy?”

  “Whatever, Mom. I don't really have an opinion.”

  “Oh, don't be ridiculous,” said her mother. “Of course you do.”

  By the time she left for school, Iz owned three color-coordinated outfits she would never wear: angora sweaters and corduroy skirts, Shetlands and kilts, clothes her mother must have seen on the front of New England college brochures. At school she wore jeans and a man's button-down shirt every day and slept whenever she could in the studio. Her roommate was a girl from Houston who wanted to be an accountant or else marry one. She was the daughter Iz's parents should've had. She wanted to stay up late and make brownies and talk about life; she wanted them to gain the freshman fifteen together. Her name was Shirelle, like the all-girl group. Excusez-moi, could you tell me please, what ees a Shirelle? Eet sounds like a kind of, how do you say, mushroom. But eet ees not a mushroom, ees eet?

  Iz was now Izabel and she was still from France. She had toned down the accent and was telling people that although she was American she'd grown up in Europe, and would ask them to explain simple things. What ees mac-and-cheese, please? What ees gangsta rap? Ah, oui, le rap des gangsters. It had become a game that gave so much protection she couldn't let go of it. She was mightily disappointed to discover that the people she met at school were from backgrounds just like hers, from indistinguishable suburbs all over the country. They sat around talking about TV shows they all remembered from childhood, as if this represented some kind of shockingly universal human condition, and held contests to see who could remember the most theme songs, or even the most lines from The Facts of Life. “You take the good you take the bad you take them both and there you have the facts of life, the facts of life.” Please, who ees Mrs. Garrett?

  She escaped to the studio and stayed there whether she was painting or not. Sometimes she just sat around reading books about Greek mythology. She was fascinated by the stories of gods and women, of rapes and transformations. Zeus came to Leda in the form of a swan. Apollo turned Daphne into a tree. She was sketching o
ut a whole series of paintings where the women turned around and began lustfully attacking the gods, who promptly ran away, terrified by the women's desire. The men, meanwhile, were turned into objects from the modern world of America, Kit-Kat bars and McDonald's golden arches. Apollo became the Lone Ranger, and Zeus became a 1970 s Corvette, his head sticking out in front, like a hood ornament. Her fellow artists thought this was a real critique.

  Only one of them, Wade, thought it was bullshit. Short, dark, wiry, and intense, he was very hairy and always had five o'clock shadow, and he walked around the communal studio dropping art terms into casual conversation, contraposto, chiaroscuro. He was from New Jersey but said he was from New York. Supposedly his parents owned a gallery.

  “Well, I mean, look, I like it, I do, I think it's clever, I certainly think it's very glib, very facile. I just think it's possibly a little bit too self-conscious, you know, the self-flagellating American artist?” This was what he said of Izabel's sketches, standing with one hand holding the other elbow, motioning with his thin, hairy fingers.

  “Excuse me please, what ees self-flatulating?”

  “Flagellating,” said Wade.

  “Oh,” Izabel said, smiling apologetically. “Excusez-moi.”

  In class discussion, Wade's remarks were articulate and penetrating and difficult for her to follow. Sometimes the professor, a short, rotund man with a plummy, not-quite-British accent like Cary Grant's, would abandon the pretense of speaking to the whole class and converse with Wade for a few minutes, both men serious and collegial, holding certain things to be understood between them. The classroom was dark, windowless, and hot, and Izabel frequently fell asleep during their discussions. Nevertheless she liked the dense, enclosed air and felt she continued to learn even when asleep, through osmosis, the art slides imprinting themselves on her brain, translucent and colored, like stained glass.