You hate school, you hated Purdue—
“But I’d love California,” she said, looking out the diner window at the drizzle and the gray sky and the evening, which was coming early tonight. “This looks like a gray miserable October day. They don’t have October in California, Gil. I wanna go where they don’t have October.” Then she got up to pay the bill, through with our discussion. And we were off for the final destination, Far Rockaway. Emma forgot her handbag in the booth and I went to run get it—god, what did she have in there, a brick?
“Maybe I do have a brick in there,” she said, taking her bag from me. “You’re always knocking my hobbies—masonry is a productive hobby for fun and profit, amusing for the whole family.”
Back on the rust-train, back to Broad Channel, and then onto the most rundown, shoddiest, worst-kept-up subway line in New York City to Far Rockaway. Once again it was all elevated and salt-corroded and the train squealed and whined over the rooftops of this seaside slum.
“Gee,” said Emma, peering through the salt-sprayed windows of the train, “I somehow expected a little more out of a place called Far Rockaway.”
There was a playground beneath us, muddy and cold-looking, only a few scattered children standing around, as if in gangs. There was a strip of stores and shopfronts down below a moment later and some of the windows in the top stories were busted out, deserted. All the buildings were Sad America, leftover ’50s boom-buildings without grace or style, like old family sedans of the period, ugly now from trying to be too futuristic then—we have rejected their future.
We got off at the final station.
“Well we did it, didn’t we?”
What, Emma?
“We rode ’em all. Every subway. I feel a sense of regret of not getting to the 8 line before they shut it down, but we can’t help tracks taken out of service.”
Yeah, but who are we going to brag about this to? We’re the only people who’d care about this.
“Nah,” said Emma, “anyone who’d like you or anyone who’d like me would think this was cool.”
We walked from the station into what could most qualify as the downtown area. A few stores were open on Sunday, most not; a lonely-looking lunch counter was open and empty, the old waitress sitting in a booth looking at the door. There was something called the Beachcomber Hotel, with a Vacancies sign in the window (“They could probably put the word vacancy on the permanent sign,” Emma said). Old people were the only people on the street, walking a dog, or each other, at an old-people pace.
Emma and I went to a municipal park, the name of which was on a vandalized sign we couldn’t read. We wandered toward it, looking out to the sea, calm, indistinct, churning up a small wave of dirty brown sand every few seconds.
“Gee, a real garden spot,” said Emma, looking chilly.
Yep.
“Getting cold now. The ocean looks cold, doesn’t it?”
Yeah.
And then: That deadly this-is-it pause, pre-goodbye.
“I tell you what,” she said quietly. “You just keep looking out at the sea and I’ll go and get on the next train back to town. You stay for another twenty minutes and look at the sea and when you turn around I’ll be gone. Simple and painless.”
Sigh. I suppose that’s what we could do.
Already her voice was getting more distant as she took a step or two back from me. “Now we’ll see each other soon enough. You can come and sleep under the stars in California anytime. Hell, I’ll probably drop out and move in with you in Chicago—oops, I forgot about the Bitch Sophie. You will tell the Bitch Sophie hello for me. Don’t take up with that girl, Gil—sight unseen I know she’s bad news.”
You’d probably like her, Emma, I said. (But you know, that was a lie. I bet they’d hate each other.)
“You’re pulling out of the theater and New York and you’re going to be insecure back there, no friends, all alone—you’re gonna let that woman become too important to you. If she starts talking about marrying you and moving out to the suburbs you call your old friend Emma, y’hear? I’ll come to Chicago and straighten her out.”
Still I didn’t turn around. I said: Emma, you won’t like anyone I’d marry or live with. And what does it matter to you?
“Gil, darling, just because I won’t have you doesn’t mean I want you throwing yourself away. I want First Approval Rights.”
Whatever you say Emma.
There was silence and I thought I heard the sounds of footsteps. Oh my, there she goes. So I looked out at the sea like she suggested and it was neither calming nor sad-making nor inspiring, just gray and there. I called out Emma’s name.
No answer.
Well that was that. And when all is said and done, I said to myself, she was the one central person in my youth, she was attached fatally to New York so that one couldn’t exist without the other, and as I turned around to walk back to the subway, I … I saw her come running back, waving at me.
“Hold it!” she said, running to catch me.
You’re not going away?
She caught up to me. “Hi.”
You’re not gone.
“I know that.”
More last words?
“Not exactly. Gil, I think you should make love to me.”
Excuse me?
“You heard me. You should sleep with me. Right now.”
Let me get this straight—
“At the Beachcomber Hotel. They have a vacancy, what do you bet? We’ll pop over there, get a room, and you do whatever it is you men do with your penises.”
I was speechless, for once.
“I wasn’t going to do this, I swear. But once I got the idea in my head, I couldn’t talk myself out of it.”
I smiled, shrugged a bit. The idea of making love to me?
“Gil, baby, you are so irrelevant to this. It’s nothing personal, I promise. You’ll serve my purpose—”
Ending your celibacy before you go out to California?
“No dummy, a BABY. I want to have a baby; I want to be a single mother. You see, this is my plan I was going to tell you about. I have to have a kid. Genetically, I can deal with you as a father. I know that sounds a little Nazi-ish but you gotta think about these things, huh?” She took my arm and led me toward the hotel, but I stopped our progress at a bench.
“What’s wrong? I thought people who had sex thought it was fun.”
I looked back to the sea and was quiet a moment. Well, yes, I’d like to, but … Emma, I said, I can’t have you produce a child that’s half-mine, pretend he or she doesn’t exist, a son or daughter—I would want to see it, support it, have it know me.
“Not if you weren’t sure it was yours.”
Explain.
“I worked this out, Gil. Tomorrow night I’m going out with Morris from work who is a Harvard MBA. A real Jewish intellectual type. After me. The perennial flirting at the water cooler. I’m going to seduce him and that will be Possible Father Number Two. When I get to California, I’m sleeping with the first post-grad student in literature that appeals to me. And as I’m going by way of Indiana to drop some things off at home, I’m going to look up Duane who I went out with in high school. He’s probably married but he always had it bad for me. He was number nine academically in our class rank, and that’s bright enough. I’ve got six possible fathers in all.”
I see.
“Now one of you is gonna get it right, I figure, and get me pregnant. Yes, you would be a pain in the ass if you thought I was carrying your child but I bet you wouldn’t be as concerned over a child that only had a one in seven or eight chance of being yours. You’d leave me alone and let me be a single mother. I’m asking this as a favor, Gil.”
I looked at her and back at the Atlantic.
“I wasn’t going to go through with my plan until I saw the hotel there. And as I walked away a minute ago, I saw it again and thought, shit, Emma Gennaro, here’s your chance. It’s now or never. You’re being very quiet, Gil.”
> Lot to think about there.
“I mean, it’s not as if…” But Emma trailed off.
It’s not as if what?
She said quietly, coming forward to put a hand on my shoulder, “It’s not as if you’re in love with me anymore, is it? I mean, you’ve gotten over that, right? I wouldn’t ask if it was going to hurt you, you know that. But now, what’s the harm, huh?”
Oh God.
“I mean, you’re a normal heterosexual guy, pretty much, right? Just start her up, put it in, let ’er rip, zip up your pants and we’ll call it a day. Hey, it’s a one-time offer.”
Will this be the first time for you in ten years, Emma?
“Aw c’mon, it’s not as if I haven’t washed down there or something for ten years. The parts still work. I think.”
I’d feel better about being the second guy, the third guy—
“Hey I could have seen Morris tonight and you tomorrow night. I wanted you to be first. Because you’ll be nice about it. You understand me enough not to make this a suicide-inducing experience. I mean, I’m out of practice, I’m not into foreplay here, I’m not gonna be the BEST YOU EVER HAD, etcetera. You’ll be my dry run—ha ha, bad choice of words there—for the Real World.”
I looked at the Atlantic Ocean which was being singularly unhelpful about telling me what I should do next.
“Don’t think about it too much, Gil—let’s go.”
All the Knowledgeable Voices were going: NO, are you a FOOL? You’ll be messed up by this, she’ll be messed up by this, your friendship with Emma, your budding romance with Sophie—everything will be messed up by this … But TEN YEARS of my past were going in a decidedly high-school-buddy voice: GO FOR IT, Big Boy, get it in there! You idiot, you’ve wanted this for years and now HERE IT IS, so move quickly here, time’s a-wastin’. What WAS the hold-up here? Sex, Gil. You know, the thing you like. What’s the worst that could happen, I recall saying to myself.
READ ON, for the answer to that one.
“Room three,” said the crone behind the hotel desk-counter, who had come out of some dark smoky smelly room with only the TV light flickering inside to answer our bell. She resented us being alive, purchasing a room she would have to clean up, making her get up from the TV news, being young and there for obvious sexual purposes.
“Always wondered how this felt like,” Emma said as we went down the hall. “A cheap sleazy degrading encounter in a hotel with a strange man—”
A strange man you’ve known for ten years.
“All men are strange to me at this point, I promise you,” she said, turning the key in the lock. It was a square room decorated circa 1930, faded wallpaper, a yellowish light in a dingy lampshade, sticky linoleum, old calendar pictures on the wall.
“This is the end of the world,” Emma said blandly. “Give me the beer.” (After the $27.50 for the hotel room—I’ll spare you Emma’s fifty choice comments about paying that much for this dump—we pooled our remaining $1.50, subtracting the subway fare back to the city, and bought some low-grade beer.) “You’re not having any of this beer,” Emma informed me, sitting on the bed. “Thank god, there’s a TV in here.”
Gee, thanks a lot.
“Let’s make this perfectly clear, Gil: Your genitalia hold no attraction whatsoever for me. You are a performing service industry. I would have purchased a whore if I could have ascertained his intelligence. No emotion enters into this, okay?”
I didn’t know how to commence things. I put my hand on her shoulder, stroking it softly, gently—
“That’s really feeble, Gil.”
I don’t know how to start this thing up.
“We’re not doing SHIT until I finish this quart of beer. I needed a fifth of vodka, not this watery stuff.” Emma turned on the black-and-white TV.
Not the TV, come on.
“Oh yes the TV,” said Emma. “Until I’m a little inebriated.”
The set warmed up. It was the network news: Mrs. Marribelle Higgins will not soon forget the Beirut massacre—her son’s last words to her came in this letter… (Mrs. Higgins reading it for the reporter, teary-eyed, trembling lip:) “You tell Sis hi. And give my love—a sob here—to Daddy…”
Gee, I’m sure glad the networks resisted sensationalizing this season’s American military tragedy—
“Next channel,” said Emma, swigging constantly. “Why don’t you go wash up?”
Right, I said, leaving her to a news report from Grenada which Reagan just invaded and allegedly liberated. There were black Grenadans dancing in a line through the street in joy. There were guys making up reggae songs for the reporters, some rhyme about Meestuh Reagan, he our man, Meestuh Reagan understand … Emma let out a strange cry.
What is it?
“I just … I just wanted you to know that officially I have now seen goddam everything—black third world peoples singing and dancing in a parade to honor Ronald Reagan, their hero.”
Emma, more importantly, there is no hot water, no bathtub or shower, just a sink and a toilet and those are brown with rust-stains and—
“Gil, this is an omen of something,” she said, fixed to the TV. “Maybe this is telling me not to bring my child into the world, the world which in the last week has adopted surrealism as its guiding philosophy.”
I came in from the bathroom and watched the Grenadans dance through the street with posters of Reagan, signs of U.S. WE LOVE YOU, and then another reggae hymn to an American soldier.
“Good god, it leaves one speechless,” said Emma, looking at me seriously. “I think we better call this off. It’s socially irresponsible bringing a child into this world.” She took a next-to-last swig of the beer.
I think we’re committed at this point, Emma.
She finished off the beer, threw the bottle toward the wicker trashbasket, and sighed heavily. “Ten whole years,” she murmured.
Yeah. Well, why don’t we get undressed?
Emma gave me a scarcely comprehending glance. “Oh no. It’s not going to work that way. You’re not, for instance, going to see me nude—get that thought out of your head. No one sees The Breasts. The last people to see The Breasts were my ninth-grade gym class in the showers, and they were sufficiently laughed at then for one lifetime. You will never see these Breasts.”
You’re gonna keep your shirt and sweater on?
“I will concede to taking off the sweater. I will unfasten my pants and pull down my panties as far as the knees but no further. I want the freedom to pull up my pants at any time.”
Wait a second. Emma, you have to take off your clothes.
“I most certainly do not.”
How do you suggest … (I clear my throat) … I, uh, become sufficiently aroused?
“What do you mean?”
I mean you with your pants down to your knees under the covers in the dark is not going to do it.
“I don’t care how you get aroused. Go in the bathroom and do it yourself. I told you this wasn’t the deluxe treatment.”
Take your clothes off and get under the covers or NO BABY for you. And turn the lousy TV off, willya?
“TV stays on.”
Why?
“I need something to distract me from the notion of your … you know, doing what you’re doing to me.” Emma began to wheel the set over to where she could see it easily from the bed; it would be inches from her face.
You are being ridiculous, I said, going into the bathroom. The TV will produce enough light that I will be able to see an approximation of your body parts, maybe a gleaming of The Breasts—
“You have a point there.” She turned the TV off. She turned off the lights. “I’ve got bad news,” she said. “It’s not dark enough in here.”
Maybe we should take these towels and blindfold ourselves, I suggested. Or we could put out our eyes …
Emma yanked the blanket off the bed and then stood on a creaking chair and tried to hang it over the already closed curtains. “What are you doing in the bathroom?”
“Make sure it’s clean. Put lots of soap on it. I don’t want to smell anything sexual.”
There was no hot water. I locked the door to the bathroom and then attempted to wash my genitals in the COLD water in the rust-stained sink.
“What are you screaming about now?”
It’s fucking cold—this sink is like ice.
Emma got curious. “Does it actually reach to the cold-water tap?”
It won’t reach anywhere if this water doesn’t warm up.
“You’re not going to come out of the bathroom nude or anything, are you?”
Can’t say I’m particularly inclined, no.
“I do not want to see your penis, Gil. I’ll never be able to look at you again in the same way. I’ll look at your face and see your penis. Penises are just ghastly things—I couldn’t get it out of my mind if I saw it. It wouldn’t be the same between us.”
I’m getting a little fed up with all this, Emma. You know, for your information, vaginas aren’t anything too appetizing sometimes.
Silence.
I kept on from within the bathroom: What if I went around carping about vaginal odor, huh? Would that make you feel confident? In the mood for love?
More silence.
Me again: I think for the sake of this act we’re already committed to, you should get more in the spirit. All right? Emma, are you out there?
“Yes, I’m out here. I don’t want to do this anymore. Let’s stop this before it’s too late.”
All clean (and about as capable of sexual excitement as a cold piece of liver), I zip my pants up and come out of the bathroom. Emma is sitting on the bed looking dejected.
“You’ve broken the mood,” she said accusingly. “That crack about vaginal odor.”
WHAT IS THIS? You can savage the whole male sex and I say one thing and the whole deal is off?
“That’s right. It’s my sex, my baby, my hotel room in my name. It will be done my way.”
We were at an impasse. I looked at her and she looked at the floor, reconsidering.
Emma Who Saved My Life Page 49
