"I can't stand it," he says. "I just can't go to the grocery store. When I bought the chicken, I thought I would be safe for at least a few days. With food in the house I could stay at home and concentrate on what I needed to do."
He's trembling. This man, this tallish, almost good-looking man who happens to be black, this man standing on the threshold of my kitchen, his hand out for mayonnaise, mumbling something about a chicken, is trembling.
Now, if I could go back and start fresh, I would try to worry less about his plans for my mayo and pay more attention to the special opportunity his sudden appearance at my door offered, the chance to get better acquainted, become true neighbors. I can guess what some of you are thinking. I know what I thought myself—the mayonnaise is going to wind up in an X-rated place, and the man busy down there in that place, mayonnaise his favorite erotic dish, his bushy hair rubbing against my bushy hair and mayonnaise smearing his lips as he laps it from my thighs—but no, this is not that kind of story. This is a different story, but I admit the other video crossed my mind too and made me suspicious of his intentions. I'd been easy, maybe too easy. Here's a strange man who'd paid no attention to my existence for four years and I'd opened my door to him, as if none of his rude behavior had hurt me, and now he's standing just a few feet away, his hand out, making a bizarre request. I don't know him. He doesn't know me. Where is this business going? Where does he want it to go? Where do I want it to go?
Believe me, I'm not the kind of person who makes a big deal out of small things. I'm the sort of individual who responds well to crises. I have three children. They're adults now, and all of you with kids know child-rearing toughens you up. Or kills you. You can't afford to waste your time sweating the small stuff. Real crises come pretty regularly. Demand your attention, demand everything. Leave you feeling very drained, very empty. Emptied of what I'm not sure, because I'm not sure I remember who I was twenty-eight years ago, before marriage and the daily, absolute demand that I pay attention nonstop to other people's needs and forget mine. But I do know that for twenty-eight years, a good portion of them spent in this upscale neighborhood my husband worked very hard and continues to work hard for us to live in, even though he's gone, even though he's moved to a condo in another upscale neighborhood in town with another woman, even though our divorce is well on its way to being consummated and I'm alone now except when the children decide to come or go. During the ups and downs of all those years, I was not the type who cried easily. I don't think I've cried more than twice during the course of these rather trying and miserable divorce proceedings. So I'm not making a big thing out of a small thing when I tell you this large black man standing in my kitchen, his face cracking, the trembling passing through his body, this man scares the pee out of me. What have I gotten myself into? Is he sane? Four years like a ghost in the neighborhood, ignoring me when we pass on the street, and now he comes to my door with an absurd request.
Does he know about the divorce? Has he heard about it from the neighbors? Not likely. How would he hear it from the neighbors? I've seldom seen him speaking to anyone, nor anyone to him. But news travels in strange ways. People share cleaning services. People share exterminators. People share mechanics, and this is, after all, a small community, so he might know. He very well might know. An acquaintance of his might play cards with my husband and have heard the stories. My husband drunk, in one of his sloppy, evil moods, may have told the stories I hate him to tell about me and LSD in college and all that dope we smoked together and those scary situations. And the way he claims he rescued me from one kind of life and brought me here to raise our children in peace and quiet and serenity and changed my life and changed his. What does this man know about those stories? Does he know I'm here in the house alone these days? Is he here because he wants something from me, something that has nothing to do with a jar of unhealthy white gook in the refrigerator he claims is necessary to rescue a chicken?
It's strange how things happen, how people behave. The man asked for mayonnaise. I still haven't said yes or said no. Then I take it upon myself, for some inexplicable reason, given my fear and the oddness of the situation, to offer him something he hasn't requested. "Do you want a glass of water? You seem to be upset about something. May I get you a glass of water? Come in. Sit down, please. Let me get you a glass of water."
Like a child, like one of my children after they'd done something bad, something they were proud of for a while but then started to worry about because it might ruin the good thing I'd become for them, destroy the unspoken understanding that they could ask for anything in the world and I'd give it to them if I could, so they'd get worried and become very quiet, wait for me to tell them what to do next, playing me, little darlings again, wanting to be led by the hand, to be dressed or undressed, told to go off to bed or fetch me a glass of water or drink the glass of water I handed them—that's how the man seemed, like a little kid or a teenager who's gone too far and knows he'd better step back from the brink but doesn't exactly know how.
He shuffles like a zombie across the gleaming Mexican tiles to a chair and sits, head down, waiting for a glass of water.
I fill a glass at the sink and then pour it out. Why am I giving him sink water? There's cold, filtered water in the refrigerator. Embarrassed, hoping he hasn't seen my first impulse, hoping he won't take it the wrong way if he has, I dump out the first glass, open the fridge, push the blue button on the water container, run a fresh glass, and put it in his outstretched hand, a large hand, a trembling hand, a hand that looks pinkish on the inside, brownish on the outside.
"I'm sorry, Mrs...." and then he pauses and I know just why he's pausing. He doesn't know my name. But he shouldn't be embarrassed. I want to say to him, "Don't be embarrassed, I don't remember your name either." But I can't say what I wish I could because I do remember. His last name, at least. So I just look at that two-toned hand and wonder why it's trembling, wonder why he doesn't retract it and hide it but leaves it dangling there until his fingers curl around the water glass. "I'm so sorry, Mrs., Mrs...." I could see the three dots hanging in the air, dot, dot, dot, meaning he leaves his sentence unfinished. I see the dots the way you can see quotation marks around words when some people talk or see words in their speech italicized.
"I feel foolish now, ma'am," he says. And I wonder where the ma'am is coming from. We must be about the same age. This ma'am reminds me of the way the only black man I ever saw inside my parents' house addressed my mother. I was still a little girl and once an old dark man driving a bread truck came to pick up Lucy. To him my mom was ma'am and my father mister or sir. Though I never thought of Lucy as old, I guess she was, but the black man seemed really old, older than my parents, so I didn't understand why he called them sir and ma'am, and now there's this man. "Ma'am," he says, "I'm sorry, I feel foolish, ma'am, sitting in your kitchen. I don't know you. I don't know you at all. And not only don't I know you, but I can't help myself from saying what I'm about to say. Forgive me, please. I'm imposing on your hospitality, but I have no one else to speak to. My wife's been gone two months now. The first month I was pretty sure she was coming back. Now I know for certain that she's not. I heard it from my mother. My wife and my mother are the best of friends. In fact, I think along with everything else she's taken, my wife intends to steal my mother from me. I can't tell you how cruel that would be. I can't tell you how much I need my mother, particularly now. I won't try to tell you, because I don't know you and I'm feeling more foolish with every word I say. But she's gone, my wife, not my mother yet, my mother probably soon, my wife may be at my mother's now, trying to pry loose the threads that connect me to my mother. Or maybe I'm just angry, maybe I'm being unfair, maybe my wife wouldn't do that to me, even though she would do the worst things to me if she could, because she's so angry.
"Do you know she threw a ham at me? The ham missed, fortunately, and landed on the floor. Well, not exactly on the floor, on my shoe, and it was new and suede. The ham had just come out of th
e oven. It was hot, quite hot. I was lucky. I saw it coming and sidestepped. I'm an athlete, you know. Or once was an athlete, anyway. Still quick enough to sidestep a flying ham. It landed on my shoe. Maybe it would have been better if it had hit me, because the shoe a mess. A little grease on me, a little grease more or less wouldn't make much difference, but it sure made a difference to that suede shoe. Isn't that a silly story? I guess they're both silly stories, my mother, my shoe, and now that I've started, now that I'm babbling, I don't know what foolish thing's going to come out of my mouth next, so I better stop."
"Please, don't stop. Finish your water. I can tell you're really upset. It's not been an easy time lately for me either. You have no way of knowing, but you're talking to a person whose life may be more like yours than you could ever imagine."
He says, "I hope not. I hope to hell not." And gulps down the glass of water.
"It hasn't been two months, just a little over a month, my husband's been gone. You could say he's been gone for twenty-eight years. I think at least that long. I think the only reason I wouldn't say he's been gone longer than that is because I haven't known him much longer than that, but he may have been gone before I met him, as strange as that sounds."
"I know what you mean," he says. "I know what you mean." And his big eyes with their heavy lids and droopy lashes just about close as he hunkers in the chair. I think he's trying to wish more water into the glass. I think he wants more but is afraid to ask. No wonder he's afraid to ask. He's only asked for one thing since he came into my house, mayonnaise, and hasn't received any yet. A glass of water, yes, a chair, yes, but that's not what he asked for. He asked for mayonnaise to go with his chicken and I'd given him a glass of water. And then he gave me a sad story and then I gave him my sad story back—well, not really, but I started, cut him off before he could finish his sad story. So here we are, two people, two sad stories exchanged, no mayonnaise delivered. A mysterious chicken still lurking somewhere in the background, the daylight seeping through the large windows of the kitchen, the moving trucks going up and down the street, FOR SALE signs everywhere. One will soon be going up on our lawn. Perhaps I could pick up a sign for him. He said something about not liking to go out. He said something about not being able to go to the grocery store. Well, perhaps I could save him some trouble. When I go to the real estate agent, I could get two signs. I think all FOR SALE signs are the same. I think they don't have personalized addresses or names on them. I think one size fits all. So I could grab two and put them in the back of the Volvo and give him either one. Or perhaps hand both to him, because he's a man and he could pound one of them into my front lawn and one into his. And he wouldn't have to drive to the village. But then I remember he hasn't asked for a sign. He's asked for mayonnaise.
"Do you have children?"
"I have two daughters," he says. "They're pretty grown up now. Both away at college. One finishing grad school, the other in her sophomore year at State. I visited them both this past month. After their mother had been away a month and I stopped trying to talk myself into believing she was coming back. Difficult as it was, I knew I had to face them. My wife already had talked to them, of course. I didn't think I could do it. Kara would be okay. I knew she would be okay. Kara's the older one. She understands. I think she loves us equally, my wife and me. She's never taken sides. She's been with us almost from the beginning of the marriage, so she remembers how bad things were from the start. Kara's smart, she knows my wife and I shouldn't be together. She understands she has to love two separate people, not the marriage, not a mother and a father. But Ginger, Ginger came along five years after Kara, and Ginger is a dreamer. She dreams of being like her mother. She dreams of being better than her father. I know why. I can't blame her. She's lived through the worst years. She doesn't know me, except as someone running from her mother, hurting her mother, so she sides with her mother, distrusts me for running, dislikes me for running. She thinks there once was something special in the marriage that should have prevented me from running, something precious I destroyed by running. Of course that's just her dream, it's just her wishful thinking, but who can tell Ginger anything? Who would want to tell anybody not to dream, not to wish, not to think the best of something her parents had tried to build? I'm babbling again, aren't I? Sitting in a stranger's kitchen, babbling. It's come to this. Afraid to leave my house. Afraid to go to the grocery store. Whining to a stranger."
"I may be less a stranger than you think. I don't want to be a stranger. I wanted to speak to you from the beginning. May I ask you a personal question? The very first time I saw you, four years ago, I wanted to speak to you. Why didn't you look at me? Why didn't you return my smile?"
"I don't think I saw your smile. I don't think I was looking very far outside myself in those days when we arrived here. I think I was very busy, very distracted. Maybe I knew it was just a matter of time. Moving to this neighborhood was a desperate act, really. The beginning of the end. Besides which, I'm too vain to wear my glasses and don't see things at more than a few feet's distance very well. I have to keep my eyes focused on the ground, just in front of my feet, so I don't trip over things."
"I thought you were surly. I thought you didn't like white people. I was hurt. I gave up trying to be your friend."
"My friend?"
"Yes, your friend."
"I'm sorry to hear that. That's too bad. I could have used friends. I still could use friends."
"Well, perhaps when all of this is over, perhaps when you get your business straight and mine's straightened out, perhaps we could have a cup of coffee or tea and sit down and talk and have another chance at friendship."
"Friendship?"
"I know you didn't ask for friendship. I keep offering you things you don't ask for. You came for mayonnaise, didn't you? Here, let me get you some. How much mayonnaise do you want? A spoonful? Some in the bottom of a cup? I probably have extra in the pantry. I could give you a whole jar."
"Just a bit will do. It's for chicken salad. I want to make chicken salad. It seems the right thing today. If I could just get myself to start in on fixing chicken salad. You know, doing all the little things you have to do so it turns out right. Dice onions and celery, a red pepper if you have one. Cut the chicken into pieces not too big or too little. Mix in mayo till you get the right consistency. Add spices while you stir. I don't know, you may not be somebody who likes chicken salad, but I do, and I don't mind expending oodles of time preparing it to get it the way I like it, and that seems to be the kind of thing I need to do today."
"Chicken salad. Enough mayonnaise for chicken salad, then."
"That's what I was hoping I could borrow. That's what I was hoping would get me through."
"And me—after I've given you some mayonnaise and you've gone back home to fix your chicken salad, what about me? What's going to get me through my day?"
"I'm sorry. I didn't know you were having difficulties too. If I had known, I wouldn't have bothered you for mayonnaise."
"You're not bothering me. What are friends for, if not sharing? And I hope we're going to be friends. I think mayonnaise is just a beginning."
"I didn't know. I just didn't know."
"What didn't you know?"
"That it would be this hard. I knew I was unhappy. I knew both of us had been unhappy for a long time. Since way before we landed here. When she said she needed to leave home, I decided not to try and stop her. We had to do something about the unhappiness. I thought, Things can't get worse. Let her go. But things can get worse. And I think they're going to get even worse than they are now."
"You see, you do need a friend. Here. Here's your mayonnaise."
"Thankyou so much. I'll replace this."
"Don't be silly. Just take it, please. It's just a stupid jar of mayonnaise. But you do owe me something in return. You can't just take the mayonnaise and leave. You owe me."
"Owe?"
"Oh, I'm just kidding. You know. Not like you actually owe me anythi
ng. I'm just making a little joke. But you could give me something in exchange—you could tell me your first name."
"My name?"
"Yes. And then I'll tell you mine. It's not ma'am. Let's trade names and smile at each other and then when the door closes behind you and I'm here alone again, I'll have that pleasant exchange to think about, not just mayonnaise. You don't have to worry about replacing it. I have plenty. That's not what I mean. I mean let's exchange names. I mean let's trade smiles. It's been four years. Far too long."
"I agree. I wish it hadn't taken so long. I wish it weren't too late."
"Too late?"
"Well, I think so."
"What do you mean?"
"I mean, she's gone. There's a big empty house. There are my daughters in other cities. I'm not going to stay here. There's no reason for me to stay. So I don't know about a friendship. I don't know if there'll be time for friendship before I leave."
"You don't understand. I don't mean what you're thinking. That's not what I mean. That's not the kind of friendship I want this to be. I just want us to exchange names, smiles, maybe shake hands, remember each other that way. It's never too late to be nice to each other. You know what I mean. Sure you do. Never too late to be nice. Never. Never. Never."
The Silence of Thelonious Monk
ONE NIGHT years ago in Paris, trying to read myself to sleep, I discovered that Verlaine loved Rimbaud. And in his fashion Rimbaud loved Verlaine. Which led to a hip-hop farce in the rain at a train station. The Gare du Nord, I think. The two poets exchanging angry words. And like flies to buttermilk a crowd attracted to the quarrel, till Verlaine pulls a pistol. People scatter and Rimbaud, wounded before, hollers for a cop. Just about then, at the moment I began mixing up their story with mine, with the little I recall of Verlaine's poetry— Il pleut dans mon coeur/ Comme il pleut sur la ville, lines I recited to impress you, lifetimes ago, didn't I, the first time we met—just then, with the poets on hold in the silence and rain buffeting the train station's iron roof, I heard the music of Thelonious Monk playing somewhere. So sofdy it might have been present all along as I read about the sorry-assed ending of the poets' love affair—love offered, tasted, spit out, two people shocked speechless, lurching away like drunks, like sleepwalkers, from the mess they'd made. Monk's music just below my threshold of awareness, scoring the movie I was imagining, a soundtrack inseparable from what the actors were feeling, from what I felt watching them pantomime their melodrama.
God's Gym Page 4
