Babylon and Other Stories

by Alix Ohlin

  “Well, God, Spike, you should have said something. God, you kids, I'm so sorry. I'm really sorry.” He stretched out his hands, looking dismayed.

  “It's not a big deal,” I said. “We'll survive.”

  “Absolutely not,” said Uncle Bob. “I mean, if a person comes to my home, I'd like that person to do more than survive. I'd like that person to have a good night's sleep. That's the very least I can do, isn't it? As a host? Well, you know what I'm going to do? I'm going to buy a new bed.”

  “You don't have to do that,” I said.

  “Yes, I certainly do. I can't have you kids coming to my home and not sleeping. You should be able to relax in your Uncle Bob's house. I just can't have it any other way. I'm buying a new bed.”

  He wouldn't talk about anything else over breakfast. As soon as we were done eating, he and Miriam drove to a furniture store in Rutland. Spike and I did the breakfast dishes. Then we went back to the old, uncomfortable bed and had sex.

  They got back at around two in the afternoon. We were reading next to the stove, Spike engrossed in a paperback thriller he'd found in the guest room, and me battling Middlemarch. I had to write a paper on it, but kept falling asleep in the middle of chapters.

  “Spike!” cried Uncle Bob as he came into the room. Cold air blew in behind him. “Come help me with this goddamn bed.”

  Miriam sat down next to me. She looked tired.

  “Good book?” she said, and I made a face.

  With great difficulty, Uncle Bob and Spike dragged the old mattress down the stairs and across the living room. It was a feathertick mattress, lumpy and huge and mottled white. It looked like a dead animal, say a polar bear—something they'd hunted and killed but that continued, even after its death, to overwhelm them. I stood in the kitchen as they dragged it in there.

  Uncle Bob let his end drop. “I need a break,” he panted. His face was red. He looked at me and Spike. “I bought this bed with my ex-wife. Let that be a lesson to you,” he said, and shook his head.

  Finally they managed to get the mattress outside and they left it in the snow behind the house. Then they carried the new one up the stairs. The whole thing took hours. Miriam stood at the base of the stairs, saying, “To your left, Spike,” and “No, you have to lift and angle it,” until Spike lost his temper and told her to leave them alone. She went away muttering. I stayed in the living room.

  Finally, Uncle Bob came downstairs and sat down next to me. “Lucy,” he said. “I think Uncle Bob needs a drink.”

  “Thanks for the bed,” I told him. “You really didn't have to do that.”

  “But I did, didn't I?” He smiled widely, that impish look again. “You know, you're the first girl Spike's ever brought here.”

  He and Spike started drinking whiskey to celebrate the new bed. It was already dark when Uncle Bob got the idea to burn the old one instead of taking it to the landfill. He got some kerosene out of the garage and told Spike to help him drag the mattress down to the valley. Spike seemed to like the idea. Miriam came out of the house, scowling.

  “What are you doing, Bob?”

  “Burning this old mattress.”

  “Where? Under all that tree cover? Are you crazy?”

  Uncle Bob looked at Spike and me and shook his head, as if appealing to our common sense. “You know,” he said, “when a middle-aged man takes up with a younger woman, it's supposed to be so he can have fun. It's not supposed to be that the younger woman just looks like a younger woman but is really a middle-aged woman inside.”

  Miriam turned sharply around and went into the house. I looked at Spike but he didn't say anything. It didn't seem right for nobody to follow her, so I did. I didn't know what to do. I went to our room and sat down on the bed. I could hear her sobbing. After a while she used the bathroom and then walked back to her bedroom. I went out to the hallway and knocked on the open door.

  “Are you okay?” I said.

  She just looked at me. “Bob,” she said, and shook her head. “Fucking Bob.” She pulled out a compact and put on her red lipstick, pressing hard against her lips, and seemed to get calmer and angrier. “Fucking Bob, he drives me crazy,” she said, and smacked her lips together. She stared at the floor as if Bob, or a picture of him, were sitting there. “I have to stay with him, though. I owe him my life.”

  “What do you mean? You can't stay with him if you aren't happy together,” I said, and I believed this to be simple and true.

  She looked at me with pity. “When I met him I had no life. I was pregnant, I had no money. He helped me. So you see?”

  I didn't. “I still think you have a choice.”

  “If I ever left Bob I'd be in trouble again in a second. I just know it. In a second. He knows it, too. That's the thing about me and Bob, he's crazier than I am. It keeps me steady, you know what I mean?”

  I looked out the window. Snow was falling thickly, but a fire burned tall and strong in the valley, and I could see two shadowy figures around it—a weird scene, magical and sinister, like a page from a fairy tale.

  “I guess I'll fix dinner,” Miriam said. She didn't seem upset anymore.

  I walked downstairs and went out the back. Snow piled on my hair and my shoulders. I found Spike and Uncle Bob each with a bottle in hand. On top of the mattress they'd piled boxes, broken chairs, some twisted pieces of metal I couldn't identify. Wind whipped the flames around loudly.

  “Housecleaning!” yelled Uncle Bob when he saw me. “I decided to get rid of some things. I know the traditional time for this is spring, but you know what Spike says.”

  “What does Spike say?” I said, looking at Spike.

  “Spike says Uncle Bob is not a traditional man,” said Uncle Bob.

  “Want some whiskey?” Spike asked me. “Is everything okay? Are you okay?”

  I nodded. It was blazing hot next to the fire and freezing a couple of steps away. The two of them seemed not to notice, standing so close to it, their faces flushed. Outside the rim of fire the world danced into darkness. Miriam emerged from that darkness, her red lips even redder in the firelight. When Bob saw her he dropped to his knees. She laughed.

  “Forgive me, forgive me,” he said. He stood up and put his arms around her, and they kissed. He looked at Spike and me, triumphantly, and said, “The love of a good woman. That's all I need.”

  Spike gestured for me to come close to him. I shook my head and he gave me a questioning look. He walked toward me and stumbled as he took a step. When he reached for my arm I moved away and walked past the fire, picking my steps over rocks, going as quickly as I could. The hill was steep and tangled with roots I could feel even under the snow, until I reached the clearing.

  It was peaceful there. The smell of the fire carried, though neither the sound nor the shadows of the flames. An early star had come out and the sky was a dark, smoky blue. I kept walking fast through the snow. I could hear Spike following me, his steps crashing messily. Hurry to me. I wanted him to have to run, possibly trip, fall, bruise himself somewhere: anything to get to me. He was closer, was almost upon me, and then he stopped. I heard him retching. I turned around and saw him bent over, vomiting into the snow.

  “Jesus, Spike.”

  “I'm sorry.”

  When he finished he took my elbow and steered me away from the steaming snow. He walked me over to a pine tree at the far edge of the clearing. With his back to me he washed his mouth out with snow. I leaned against the trunk of the tree and looked back down the hillside, toward the fire, my heart beating fast in my chest.

  “Marry me,” he said.

  His cheeks were shiny with melted snow and his eyes were bright. I felt like no one would ever see straight through to the heart of me like he did. Years passed, we divorced, I got myself sober, strong, everything a normal person is supposed to be, yet some nights I still feel this. I remember—the world was cold and white all around me and, like a bride, I lifted my face to his.

  Babylon

  Robert fell in love
for the first time when he was twenty-nine, and he was vastly relieved. He'd started to think that he wasn't capable of it, that in his soul—or heart, or brain chemistry, or wherever the center of a person was located—something essential was lacking. Over the years he'd dated enough women to know he was straight, and he'd cared for some of them a lot; in college, he and his girlfriend Marisa had even tossed around names for potential children. But when Marisa suddenly got sulky their senior year, stopped laughing at his jokes, and eventually announced she'd been nursing “a thing” for his roommate for almost a year and had recently found out he had “a thing” for her, too, that she was therefore breaking up with him and would love to still be friends although she'd understand if he couldn't handle it, he wasn't shattered. Pained and irritated—especially when forced to listen to them having loud, panting sex at all hours of the day and night on the other side of his dorm-room wall—but not shattered. This, he thought, was where he failed. He never felt himself split open like a melon, offering all his vulnerable fruit to the world.

  Then he met Astrid at a wedding in Babylon, Long Island. He'd worked with the groom, a financial analyst, for years—the bride was an analyst, too, as were many of the guests, and the reception was full of tedious jokes about the marriage being productive and cost-beneficial—but they rarely saw each other outside the office, so he sat at a table in the corner, dateless, making small talk about global markets with a woman from Morgan Stanley while she picked at her Chilean sea bass. The main thought on his mind was that once dinner was over he could go home. In the back of the room he saw a thin blond woman lingering uncertainly, as if she, too, were anxious to leave. She had the bad posture common to many taller women, and kept scanning the room vaguely, as if she'd lost whomever she came with. But after watching her for a few minutes, nodding and grunting through the conversation at his table, he decided she wasn't looking for anybody at all; she was just looking. Lying about needing to visit the men's room, he excused himself and walked over. Up close she had wide, clear blue eyes and delicate wrinkles that sprayed out from them. Even her nose had three little wrinkles on either side.

  “Are you tired of all the market jokes, too?” he said.

  She jumped as if he'd touched her, and when she glanced over her shoulder, he realized that she'd felt invisible. For a second he considered going back to his table but then saw the Morgan Stanley woman glowering in his direction, having figured out that he'd lied to her in order to go talk to a blonde. Men, he could practically see her thinking.

  And then she smiled. “You're not into…markets?” she said.

  “Well, I'm a computer guy, so I shouldn't complain. Our weddings are much, much worse,” he said. “When we have them, anyway.” He told himself to stop talking. Her blue eyes were fixed on him. Her skin was very pale, almost translucent, blue veins visible at her temple. Her smile broadened even further, and he understood that he was staring. He felt very warm.

  “I'm Astrid,” she said. “I have to leave now, but would you like to have dinner sometime?”

  “God, yes,” he said.

  The band began to play. She wrote down her phone number, a Manhattan exchange, and walked out of the room as the happy couple began their first married dance together. All my life, he thought, I'll remember this day.

  He waited two days to call, not wanting to appear too eager, also not wanting her to forget who he was. As he was dialing he realized she didn't know his name, and almost hung up, but she answered just as he was about to put down the receiver, catching him off-guard. “Hello?” she said, her voice cool and placid.

  “This is Robert?” he said squeakily. “We met at Marcy and Brian's wedding last week in Babylon. The really boring one with all the financial humor, if that's not an oxymoron. Financial humor, that is.” To all this she said nothing, and he wasn't even sure she was still there. He closed his eyes. “I was wondering if you still wanted to have dinner.”

  “Oh, of course,” she said. “Why don't you come over here?”

  The immediacy of this response violated every precept of dating in New York. He pictured her blue eyes, her white skin. She wasn't beautiful but there was something about her, some dim, pale radiance, that made her looks extraordinary.

  “That sounds great. I don't want to put you to any trouble, though.”

  “I like to cook,” she said. “Can you come tomorrow?”

  “Oh, of course,” he said. On the other side of the phone he could hear her exhale in a smile that echoed his. After she told him where she lived, they got off the phone. The easiness of it made him all the more nervous; made him want her all the more.

  At the appointed time he showed up at the apartment with flowers, wine, and chocolate. This was overkill, he knew, but she didn't seem the type who'd read too much into it, although he hardly knew what type she was at all. She opened the door wearing a white button-down shirt and jeans, an outfit that on another woman might have looked studiedly casual, yet on her looked simple and relaxed. Her blond hair, which had been swept up at the wedding, fell loose and straight to her shoulders. He kissed her on the cheek, and she blushed, pink seeping into her white skin like a watercolor.

  “Come in,” she said.

  Entering, he smelled food cooking and another smell beneath it, maybe of flowers. Her apartment was feminine without being fussy: a blue couch, a matching armchair and a brown jute rug, a bookcase with a stereo, framed black-and-white nature photographs on the walls. The living room was, if anything, a bit abstract, like a picture in a catalog. Then again, she'd probably cleaned up before he got there.

  There was an awkward flurry of gift-giving and putting the flowers in a vase and drink offering, and then they were sitting next to each other on the couch, wineglasses in hand.

  “What are you making that smells so good?” he said.

  “Chicken Mirabella,” she said. “My mother always used to make it for guests. Do you mind having chicken? I know it's not very exciting.”

  “Of course I don't mind. Do you want any help?”

  “There isn't room for more than one person in the kitchen, but thanks anyway.”

  “Thank you,” he said, blushing, “for cooking.”

  “It relaxes me,” she said.

  And she did look relaxed, sitting there on the blue couch in her white shirt, her long fingers cupping the base of her glass. She made him feel as though ordinary rules didn't apply. So he leaned over and kissed her, once, on the lips. When he sat back he was trembling a little.

  “Thank you,” she said. “I'd better go check on the food now.”

  While she was in the kitchen he walked around the room. Her apartment faced a courtyard where a small tree grew wizened and stunted in the permanent shade. He could see a man on the other side watering the plants in his window. He wandered over to her stereo, thinking to put on some music, but she seemed to have only classical, and he decided against it. Then, on a bookshelf below the stereo, he saw a sculpture of a woman's breast— just the breast, and so lifelike that for a second he was afraid to touch it. It had pale brown flesh and a darker brown nipple, which was erect. Picking it up, he discovered it was floppy and cool to the touch. He stood there frowning, holding it carefully in both hands, wondering why on earth such a thing was in this blue, abstract apartment.

  “It's from my work,” Astrid said beside him, and he turned guiltily, not having heard her come back into the room.

  She held out her left hand, palm up, and he placed the breast on it like a child surrendering chewing gum to a teacher. But she took his right hand in hers and guided his index and middle fingers to the surface of the breast. “I'm a physician's assistant in a women's clinic,” she said. “This is to teach women how to look for lumps.” Her hand was warm, and the breast was cool. She moved his fingers around the breast in a circle from the outside to the center, pressing inch by inch, stopping to make sure he could feel the lumps, little pits as hard as seeds. Rather than looking at him, she was gazing down at the b
reast, concentrating. When they got to the nipple she said, “You have to pull on it to see if there's any discharge.” Then she dropped his hand and put the breast back on the shelf, and it dawned on him that he'd been holding his breath. He exhaled. “Let's eat,” she said.

  They ate in the living room, and over dinner she told him more about her work. Originally she'd thought she might want to be a doctor, but had decided against giving up that much of her life to medical school and residency. In her current job she felt like she was helping people and could still get home in time for dinner every day. She asked about his work, and he made self-deprecating jokes about how boring it was, and she laughed at them. The food was excellent, he told her, and she blushed. After dessert, a homemade apple pie, he stood up, his head swimming a little from the wine, and insisted on doing the dishes. When she wanted to help, he said, “There's only room for one in the kitchen, right? Go sit down and relax.”

  She smiled, and from the kitchen he could hear her moving through the small apartment to the bathroom. He washed all the dishes and placed them in the drying rack. Like everything else, the kitchen was small but well organized. He was whistling. Scraping the last few scraps of chicken out of the pan, he saw the garbage can was full, so he tied the bag and pulled it out, then looked in the pantry for a replacement. Instead he found a stack of empty containers from Dean & DeLuca, all the courses of their dinner matched by the labels: the chicken Mirabella, the mesclun salad, the apple pie. She must have transferred the food into pots and pans to look as if she'd cooked it. He stood there staring at the containers, amazed that she'd lie about cooking; but then, suddenly, it made her more human to him, more endearing. Didn't he want to seem perfect to her, too?

  He started seeing her every weekend, then every few days, and before long he was sleeping over at her apartment almost every night. Most of the time they ate out, or he cooked; she never did, and he never mentioned the containers from Dean & DeLuca. Every night she fell asleep at ten o'clock, exactly; even if they were at a movie, out with friends, or in a restaurant, he would see her eyelids drooping like a child's, and she'd lean her head on his shoulder. In sleep her body grew even more attractive to him. She slept on her back, one arm flung over her head, her breasts flattened against her chest like the model he'd handled that first night. Her breathing was regular and deep. Often he willed himself to stay awake and watch her, feeling how deeply in love he was.