The First Desire

by Nancy Reisman

  After two blocks of fast walking he stops to light a cigarette, and then he notices the city again. Despite the agitation, he is not impervious to the day, bright and breezy, to the liveliness of the streets, the women in lighter skirts and snug dresses with small jackets, no overcoats, their mouths lipsticked in pinks and reds, boys selling newspapers, lunch carts selling hot dogs and soda, yellow cabs easing their way through traffic, intermittent bursts of sun over sidewalks dense with suits and hats rushing to lunch. A beer? He will take himself out for a beer, but first to the post office, which does not take long to reach. He avoids the line of customers and heads for the boxes, to 764, which is brass-plated with black numbers. 764, the numbers that have in some way claimed him, the numbers he’s started to play and that feel in this moment like deliverance. He turns the lock—more magic—and opens the box to a postcard which has been there for two weeks, a postcard he himself has mailed. It is addressed to TJ Gordon. He loves the moment of turning the lock, as any man might, and finding the card marked TJ Gordon, and taking the card as if it belonged to him, which in fact it does. On the front is a cartoonish map of New York State. On the reverse is a rhyming poem about sea battles he copied from a book in the parlor. It calms him to read the poem and turn the postcard over in his hand, and it seems enough for now, but he would like another letter, one from a woman. Maybe Susanne from the Falls. Last summer at the club, he took her phone number and address, and gave her the number of the post office box. He had liked the way she talked to him, with a chumminess that wasn’t too coy, and the way she’d touched him. Why hadn’t he been back there? August, yes, with its hard shock and impenetrable fog.

  He is holding the postcard and the mailbox is empty. A small space but one in the real world marked TJ. It’s a start, a foothold, but the size of it is a problem: you can’t exactly live there. You can’t bring a woman there. He feels good standing in front of the box, but he would feel better standing in the box, were the box on another scale, say the size of a room, or an apartment. A place with a good bed, a fine sofa, a nice oak table, an icebox. A tiled bathroom with a large white tub. You wouldn’t need more than that.

  And it is this he thinks of—the image of an efficiency taking shape in his mind—while he exits the wide doors of the post office, back into the day, having spoken to no one. In this moment he is a man who has checked his post office box and is now considering his apartment. The women on the street, all of them, seem lit up now, as if they have shed a final chrysalis, especially the young secretaries. Free for a while, they are marvelous, the slender one with the pink skirt and yellow waved hair, the coal-eyed one with the snappy walk. He can’t take them all in, their bodies and voices: there on the street, a hundred possibilities. The world could be that open, he thinks. And he stops at a bar and grill and drinks a cold beer, eats a sandwich, and watches the street scene through the screen door. For a time it seems anything could happen.

  On his return to the store, a quiet elation stays with him: he senses an inevitability to the expansion of the post office box. This other space and the life it contains are fated. He does not know how it will occur, only that it will, it must. So he was not so wrong, this week, to hope: he just couldn’t see the true source. There’s a perfumed lightness then to the air, a sharp pleasure in observing women, the warm breeze itself a promise, and he is swept by a sense of generosity, which leads him to buy a bag of bakery cookies for Celia and Jo.

  Through the afternoon it remains easy to be kind to his sisters, who are at first watchful, then seem to give in to the fact of spring, to the sugary cookies, to the new way of seeing the world. It is that simple to set the mood, isn’t it? At the end of the day, after they leave, he takes his newspaper to the bar down the block and orders another beer. The bartender calls him TJ again, and he writes one more note, this one to Susanne in Niagara Falls. He’s been traveling but now he’s back, he says. He’ll try to stop by the club one of these weekends.

  IT IS BEST not to question a lucky streak: you ride it as long as you can, avoid diversion. If you stay focused, it just might carry you into a charmed life. It requires patience and faith, a heightened lucidity, attention to signs; also, avoidance of contradiction and doubt and anyone who closes windows of time. The elation is worth every attempt to sustain it, and Irving begins to visit the post office twice a day, once before he opens the store, once at lunch; has his daily beer at the corner bar; scans the classifieds every day for the right ad, the right efficiency. He will know when he sees it. He spends as little time as possible at the house, ignoring laundry, ignoring mail and chores, the rain gutter problem, the newsboy’s bill. At the store, he does not answer the phone in the mornings—it’s a risk for business, he knows, but worth it. He tells Jo to take messages from Sadie: he’d rather not speak to her right now.

  Jo observes him but there’s nothing disapproving in her manner. In fact, she smiles. “Sure thing,” she says. Maybe she understands more than he gives her credit for: maybe she does in fact wish him well. He could use a sister wishing him well, but what matters is the way ahead, his own mission.

  A week passes, and there is a brief note back from Susanne. I’ll be at the club Saturday night. How are you? So she is still there: she is waiting. Saturday evening he drives out of the city to the Falls. The weather has brought people out, and there’s a swing band with horns, a smooth-voiced tenor. Here is Susanne, just as she said, just as he remembers her: she’s sweet-looking, with curly amber hair and a quick smile, a good dancer, an unfussy way about her. But she’s cautious at first: it has been ten months, after all.

  “I want to talk to you about what happened,” he says. “I want to apologize for not writing to let you know.” And he tells her the truth, or at least the important part: his father died.

  She squeezes his hand, her face filled with sympathy. She’s sorry, she tells him, she’s glad to see him again. It’s beautiful, the way she stays close to him in the crowded club, the way the name TJ sounds when she says it, a little amused. At a corner table she lets him kiss her, long deep kisses. He wants to sleep with her tonight—it takes an effort not to push her—but there is the promise of another date, and she’s eager, he can tell she’s eager. He has time ahead. Later, when he checks into a motel, it does not bother him to be alone. He signs in as Thomas Gordon, the name itself a kind of elixir, the room plain but still a confirmation of this life.

  Sunday there is of course the dampening effect of return, there is always that, but he does not hurry back to the house; he buys a newspaper and reads in the closed store. Jo’s hawk-eyed about the store accounts, but she won’t fuss long about a missing twenty, and a few good bets should give him what he needs for an efficiency.

  MONDAY EVENING at Lancaster, in the upstairs bathroom, he finds two small envelopes set atop his shaving kit, one on pale pink stationery, one on white. Neither has Lillian Schumacher’s return address: the first says E. Rosen, the other Mrs. David Markowitz. His sisters are downstairs, listening to the radio in the parlor, and he carries the envelopes with him to his bedroom.

  The room is dusty and sour, his dirty clothes scattered over the bed and chair. It does not comfort him to be here, and he is looking now for comfort: the envelopes make him uneasy. The paper is very fine, the handwriting like elaborate bakery confections—all too delicate to handle. His name is on the envelopes, but they do not seem to belong to him: the pink one in particular seems a taunt he can’t defend himself against. E. Rosen. E. Rosen, whose hand he touched two weeks ago. E. Rosen, who must think Irving lives in a different kind of room, a clean, distinguished room, one more like his father’s down the hall. Polished, aired, uncluttered. And maybe in his father’s room he can be that man. He tries. He carries the envelopes down the hall—also clean and polished—to his father’s room, which his sisters tend like a shrine. He sits on the bed and waits, tries to feel the glimmer of that night with Esther, but it keeps swimming away from him. He is squinting to see it, and it won’t swim back. As
if a blue-black sheet has fallen, blocking light, blocking the glimmer from returning and Irving from retrieving it. Is there anything he knows how to retrieve? A word from Lillian would help—even a postcard. Or some letter he could open, maybe a letter from Niagara Falls.

  He abandons the envelopes and leaves the house without a word to his sisters. A light rain is falling and he drives the Ford to a pay phone, where he counts out his change and gives an operator Susanne’s number. She picks up on the third ring, her voice sweet—had he not noticed that, how sweet Susanne’s voice is? He lights a cigarette as he talks, introduces himself again on the phone, and she laughs. “I know who this is,” she says. “How are you, TJ?” She’s making it easy, and he is remembering himself now, the bad moment is over. He’s done exactly the right thing. He asks to see her again on Friday, and she says yes, and he arranges to meet her at the club, he’ll be there at eight, he says. If he gets to the Falls early, he’ll call before.

  How simple it is. After the call, he stops at the liquor store on Delaware for a fifth of whiskey: he likes the bars but they’re expensive. If he’s going to spend money at the Falls, he’ll need to economize—and he will spend money at the Falls, maybe this time reserve a hotel room in advance, something with a bit more style. He might need cash for a new suit, or at least a pair of shoes.

  He samples the whiskey in the parked car before he drives home; it’s warming, a little smoky. When he enters the house, Celia’s working on her puzzle, Jo’s in their father’s reading chair with a dime-store novel. “Hi, Irving,” Celia says, her voice kind and unmuddy, and he stops to see the puzzle.

  “It looks like ships,” he says, and she tells him yes, a fleet of ships. “I like ships,” he says, which is true. Also a way to be nice, and he wants to be nice, doesn’t he? “Do you want a drink?” He holds up the bag. She shakes her head and he turns to Jo. “You? A drink?”

  It surprises him that Jo accepts. It surprises him that she says, “Thank you,” like a normal person, but he’s relieved, and pours himself a drink too. They aren’t so bad, Jo and Celia, there’s something they understand, he’s certain of it. It’s as if they sense the rightness of what’s happening to him. “Jo,” he says, “you think you could help me out with my room?”

  She pauses, considering. “Put your dirty clothes in the laundry,” she says. “I’ll do the rest next time I clean.” It is clear from her tone he’ll owe her something. But it doesn’t matter, does it? He’ll always owe her something: this time he’ll know why.

  FOR THREE more days, telephone messages accumulate, all in Jo’s neat script, with the date and time of the call, Sadie’s messages with exact phrasing: “Call me today,” “Are you going or not?” and “For Pete’s sake, what is going on?” There are two from a Mrs.

  Markowitz, who Jo tells him sounds nothing like Lillian Schumacher. He drops the messages in a drawer. There is too much else to think about.

  Friday afternoon, when Sadie shows up at the store in person, it seems only he is unprepared. Jo, unruffled, says hello and compliments Sadie on her new hat: she’s suspiciously friendly, as if she’s enjoying a private joke. In the work room, Celia offers chocolate cookies, then returns to her puzzle, farmland dotted with cows. But Irving is stunned by Sadie’s presence, her peach suit and flowery perfume, her purposefulness and solidity, the clarity of her voice, the Sadieness of her. It’s as if she’s appeared, suddenly, from China. “We need to talk,” she says.

  “Of course.” In the small office he offers her a chair but she does not want to sit. Instead she paces in front of the desk.

  “Exactly what’s going on?” she says.

  “Nothing,” he tells her. “Nothing.” And it seems that nothing is going on: it is an ordinary Friday afternoon. He has sold a bracelet, accepted a deposit for some pearls. Celia is quiet, Jo is quiet, the bills are paid up. “Would you sit down?”

  “I’m not sitting down. You haven’t been taking my calls.”

  “It’s a busy time,” he tries, but you can see she’ll have none of this. She’s pale, possessed by a quivery rage, the sort she rarely shows. Too worked up: he’ll have to be careful.

  “You should have gotten back to Esther. Or at least to her mother.”

  Esther. Her mother. Sadie seems to be talking about people he knew years ago, or not at all. “Her mother?” No, he does not know her mother.

  “The dinner invitation, Irving. I know you got it.”

  And he does not know what to say to Sadie now. It seems he has entered a dark, unfamiliar house—so many conversations with her are like this—and he’ll have to find his way nonetheless. “That’s not your business, Sadie.”

  “It is when I have to make excuses for you. Do you want my help or not? I thought you wanted my help.”

  “I know. I appreciate it, I really do.”

  “No, you don’t. You don’t, Irving.”And now the rage is mixed with something else—anguish? Why is she anguished? It’s as if he has broken a momentous promise, betrayed her; as if he’d pledged to marry Sadie herself, then refused. She is on the verge of tears and he himself is trembly: the verge of tears always frightens him.

  “I appreciate it,” he says, and again it seems a bald lie, though it isn’t really, he doesn’t appreciate everything but most things yes, Sadie herself, yes. If only she didn’t expect so much. And now there’s a curdling to her expression, she’s disgusted—that’s even worse, isn’t it? She won’t look at him, as if he repulses her, it’s unbearable, the moment she turns away like that. And the loneliness seems to well larger again, he can feel himself adrift, splintering and drifting at once. In a moment he’ll be falling, swept by vertigo. “Please sit down,” he says, and she waits until he repeats it. “Please sit down.” Finally she takes a chair.

  “You don’t understand,” he says. “Really you don’t.”

  “Explain it then,” Sadie says.

  She is gazing at him now, and he notices he has started to cry, which is terrible, the way of small boys. But he has to gaze back at her: she must not leave the office.

  “It has to do with the war,” he says.

  She’s wan but composed, waiting.

  “You know the war was hard,” he says. “It really was. But something else happened too.” And then the story comes to him, his story, the story of England, how he fell in love with a woman and wanted to marry her. “Sarah,” he says. Sarah broke his heart. And as he tells Sadie about this woman, this Sarah, he pictures walking with a woman in an orchard, and the heartbreak is immense, as if his body cannot contain it. Sarah left him for another man, he says, a refugee. What could he do? He didn’t know if he would recover, or how, but he returned, pretended to be done with it. He thought he was over it, he really did, but there have been so many changes. He’s been struggling. Sadie’s right, he hasn’t been fair, he hasn’t been honest with her, but he’s been struggling. And Esther Rosen’s been through too much already, hasn’t she? She has, Sadie knows she has.

  Sadie scrutinizes him. She says nothing for a long time, and then, finally, “This is true?”

  If she believes him, he knows she will relent. She will continue to gaze at him, and he will be her brother. There is nothing else he can explain: this is the truest story he can tell. He looks her in the eye and nods.

  “I wish you had told me before,” she says. She is calm and unhappy. “I’ll call you later.” She rises to leave and does not kiss him on the cheek, the way she usually does, and he feels a strange pang, not having the kiss on the cheek. He needs to have that back, and the need itself shocks him. She crosses from the office to the workroom, to the card table, the puzzle, and murmurs to Celia, something about meadows and red cows and spring hats. And for a brief moment, before Sadie’s gone, before Friday resumes as Friday and then as Friday evening, before he’s had a whiskey or phoned a Hotel St. George or left for a night in Niagara Falls, he’s sure he’ll vanish without her.

  CHAPTER 25

  Sadie

  19
49

  Sadie’s life seems to be the one she wanted: there are dinner parties with music, evenings with Bill at the theater, weekly luncheons with her card club. Her daughters are lovely if confounding. Yet it’s all less solid than she expected. Days seem rife with loosely woven spots and frayed bits, and she’s discovered that wanting itself is slippery. What she once wanted is not necessarily what she wants now, but desire often slides to the periphery, or beyond, into murk. She does not like murk and would rather avoid the matter than venture into unknowing. It seems she once felt more certain—even during the war—but perhaps she’s confused her younger self with the past’s more definite shape. Still, tonight she had hoped to put up her feet and hide in a novel while Bill read his newspaper, and while the girls finished their homework like calm and reasonable young women: she had a real and certain wish for Dinner at Antoine’s. It was not an impossible wish, but today Elaine is teary, fighting with her best friend over something Sadie cannot comprehend. Elaine’s face is pink and blotchy, her wavy chestnut hair wild with alarm. Her words sound gluey and choked, and even if they were clear, Sadie might not understand the cause of the rift, the day’s particular slight. Don’t think about it, she wants to tell Elaine, read a book, but Elaine is entirely and convincingly thirteen, and Sadie might as well say Don’t breathe.

  Elaine has tucked herself into the blue reading chair, her legs curled under her, as if making herself as small and inconspicuous as possible, though her sniffling is loud. She’s finished the hot chocolate Sadie made, accepted the handkerchief, the mint-green afghan. Her mood will last as long as it lasts: no one can predict, though it’s unlikely that Elaine, shy Elaine, will make the first call to her friend Daphne. The chair she has chosen—Bill’s favorite—is the one closest to the telephone, and from time to time she gazes at the black dial with puffy-eyed longing. Sadie closes the living room curtains, beyond which the sky is a dim quilt of cloud. Four blocks away little Daphne is no doubt sulking with equal fervor.