by Amy Bloom
“I thought you were from Iowa. Kansas? Was I wrong?” Ray said, when they’d brought their beers to a table.
“No. I said my parents were dead and I had an aunt and uncle in Des Moines. Which I don’t.”
Macy drummed her fingers on the table.
“I love Neil,” she said. “I really do.”
“I’m sure you do. And he loves you. Christ, you have only to look at him—he thinks you hung the moon.”
“Really? He wants to have a baby.”
“Good,” Ray said. “Have two.” Babies having babies, he thought.
“He thinks I hung the moon? He’s the best man I know,” Macy said. “I’m just not who he thinks I am.”
“That’s not the worst thing in the world,” Ray said, and Macy put her hand, cool and wet from the beer, over his lips. Her hand smelled like grapefruit.
“I don’t mean he doesn’t know my essence on some metaphysical level. I mean I have lied to him on a million different occasions about a million things.”
Ray nodded.
“When I was ten, my mother fell down on the kitchen floor, and blood was pouring out of her nose. So, you know, I understood she was OD’ing on coke.”
Ray nodded again, like women OD’ing on coke in front of their children was as much part of his life as reading the paper.
“I had this amazing babysitter, Sammy. So—I don’t want this to take forever—when I’m fourteen my mother moves in with this guy, we’ll just call him The Asshole, and I moved in with Sammy. It turns out, Sammy’s a transvestite.”
Ray nodded again; he had defended a dozen middle-aged guys in dresses who were caught speeding.
“So, I do Sammy’s hair and nails. And I do his friends’, too, and Sammy basically sets me up in the tranny business in our TV room. I do hair, nails, and makeup every day after school and most of Saturday. When I graduate from high school, I have three thousand dollars in my savings account. Plus, I got into Bryn Mawr on scholarship and I graduated second in my class.” Macy smiled shyly. “My name’s not Macy. I changed it—I mean I changed it legally, when I was sixteen. Sammy’s mother’s name was Macy. So when we get to Bryn Mawr, Sammy is just the shit. All the parents love him. He drives off and he goes, Au revoir, honeybun, and don’t look back. He got a horrible staph infection, from the acrylic nails. Ten days in the ICU. It was terrible. He was a really, really nice man,” Macy said, wiping her face with a beer napkin.
“When I was in college,” Ray said, “I let a guy give me a blow job. Let me be clear. This guy paid me fifty bucks, which was a lot of money at the time, and I let him do me once a week for three years. If not for him, I would have had to drop out of college. You already know my father was a bum.”
“Thank you,” Macy said, and she laughed. Ray smiled.
“Also, you might already know this—I’m in love with Randeane.”
“I really like her,” Macy said. “Everything about her, she’s just so great. She’s read everything. I’m sort of in love with her.”
“Maybe,” Ray said. He sighed and spread his arms along the back of the booth. “I’m pretty sure not like this.”
One morning, Ray told Macy, he’d gotten to Randeane’s late, between the morning people and the lunchtime people, and there was a man sitting at Ray’s usual table.
Oh, Ray, Randeane said. This is my friend, Garbly Garble. Ray couldn’t make out the man’s name. He was taller than Ray, in his late thirties or early forties; it was harder and harder for Ray to tell anything except that someone was more or less his age. People under fifty looked like young people and people under thirty looked like children. The man stood up politely and shook Ray’s hand. He shook it twice, not the hard handshake that even men Ray’s age gave one another just to show they were still in the game, but a very gentle, slow handshake as if he was mindful of Ray’s osteoporosis or arthritis or some other damned thing that would make Ray’s hand crumble in his like an Egyptian relic. The man was clearly not thinking, So, this is the competition; he was thinking, Poor old Uncle Ray, or even poor Grandpa Ray, Civil War veteran. Nurse, get this man a chair. Ray walked out and across town to the office of Ferrante and Ticknor, Attorneys-at-Law. He walked along the narrow, cluttered river that ran through the park.
In Leo Ferrante’s office, Ray cleared his throat and Leo put his hand up.
“Don’t,” he said.
“What, you’re psychic?” Ray said.
Leo said he was sorry, that in the past three days he’d had two old friends come in to divorce their wives and marry hot chicks.
“I wouldn’t call her a hot chick,” Ray’d said.
Macy leaned forward, her face in her hands, lit up with the thought of Ray’s love for Randeane. She looked about twelve years old.
“You deserve happiness, Ray.”
“And Eleanor? What about her happiness?”
Macy did not say that Eleanor’s happiness was of no account to her.
Ray said, “Someone’s got to speak up for Ellie,” and he looked around Buck’s as if the gold-haired bartender or the young couple might say something on Ellie’s behalf. Like: Goddammit, that woman has—in her own way—devoted herself to you. Or maybe the bartender would say, Leave Ellie and your children will turn their backs on you. They think you’re a good man. Leave Ellie to shack up with a young lady from the coffee shop, half your age. No fool like an old fool. Ray turned back to Macy but he could still hear the bartender and Leo Ferrante talking to him. Your prostate alone’s enough to scare her off; you gotta get a guest room just to keep it somewhere. And your suitcase of Viagra and Levitra and don’t forget the Allopurinol and the Amlodipine and the Flomax, without which you’ll never piss again. And why shouldn’t she want children, young as she is? She could have them with that tall, good-looking man, Ray heard the bartender say, and he looked at her and she winked, gold powder sparkling on her eyelids and cheekbones, shining across her breasts. She brought them another pair of beers and a bowl of nuts.
“Do you have any food?” Macy said.
“What do you like?” the woman said.
Macy looked around and she sniffed the air.
“Catfish, maybe,” she said.
The woman shrugged pleasantly. “For two? Sweet-potato fries? Butter beans?”
“I have died and gone to heaven,” Macy said, and she almost clapped her hands.
“I don’t think I can eat all that,” Ray said.
“I love it. I’ll bring some home for Neil. Like they say, so good, makes you want to slap yo’ mama.” Macy took a sip of beer and smiled. “Sammy was a great cook. Actually, I’m a great cook.”
Turned on a dime, Ray thought. Two hours ago, she was going to hang herself in the garage because Neil didn’t know her essence; now she’s bringing him a Southern fried feast and they’ll eat in bed. Laughing. Ray thought of Randeane and his heart clenched so deeply, he put his hands on the table.
“You should bring some home for him. I really can’t eat that stuff anymore,” he said. “Call him. Tell him you’re coming home. Don’t be afraid to tell him about your mother and about Sammy. He’ll admire you for that stuff. For getting past it.”
“Okay,” Macy said, biting her lip. “You really think so?” She took out her phone and checked her text messages.
“He’s still at work,” she said, grinning like a kid. “He’s not even worrying.” She texted Neil and showed Ray: B home soon, w fab dinner. Love u so.
A big man came out of the kitchen and laid their food in front of them. He nodded toward the game on TV.
“That game’s over,” he said. “You know what Archie Griffin said, ‘Ain’t the size of the dog in the fight but the size of the fight in the dog.’ These guys got no fight.”
“Hell of a player, Griffin. Two Heismans.”
The man paused, like he might sit down, and Macy moved over to make room.
“Great tailback,” the man said.
“Well, they measure these things differently now,” Ray said. “For m
y money, Bronko Nagurski was the greatest running back.”
“Ah,” the man said. “Played both sides of the ball. You don’t see that anymore.”
“No you don’t,” Ray said.
The man slipped the bill under Ray’s plate. “Come back soon.”
“Ray,” Macy said. “If you want to be with Randeane, if you need, I don’t know, support, I’ll be there for you. Neil, too.”
Ray picked at the fries, which were the best fries he could remember eating. If he did nothing else to improve his life, he could come to Buck’s every few weeks, have a beer and a plate of sweet-potato fries, and talk football with the cook.
Macy tapped the back of his hand with her fork. “Ray. You be the quarterback and I’ll be, I’ll be the guy who protects the quarterback. I’ll be that guy.”
“Honey,” Ray said. “There’s really no one like that in football.”
Right after Jennifer was born, they found cyst after cyst inside of Ellie, and when Jennifer was two, Ellie had a hysterectomy. Ray brought her an armful of red stargazer lilies from the florist, not from the grocery store or the hospital gift shop, because Ellie was particular about things like that, and when he walked in, she smiled, closed her compact, and set her lipstick on the bedside table. She’d brought her blue silk bathrobe from home and had brushed her hair back in a ponytail and tied it with a blue ribbon. She made room for Ray on the bed and they held hands.
“The kids are fine,” Ray said. “Nellie’s got Neil making the beds and Jennifer’s running into the wall about ten times a day. Then she falls down and laughs like a lunatic.”
“Oh, good,” Ellie said, and she looked out the window and sighed.
“Hey, no sighing,” Ray said. “Everything’s all right.”
Ellie said, “No, it’s not. I wanted one more baby. I wanted to be like everyone else. I didn’t want to go into menopause at thirty-three, thank you very much, and I am not looking forward to having Dr. Perlmutter’s hand up my you-know-what every six months for the rest of my life.”
Ray squeezed her hand. “For better or for worse. Isn’t that what we said? So, this is a little bit of worse.”
Ellie tossed his hand aside and squinted at him, like the sexy, fearless WACs he admired when he was a boy, girls who outran and outgunned the guys, even in skirts and heels.
“You think this is worse?” Ellie said. “Oh, shame on me. Sweetie, if this is what worse looks like—we’ll be just fine.”
She’d said the same thing when his blood pressure medication chased away his erections and Viagra brought them back, but not the same. They were unmistakably old-man erections; they were like old men themselves: frail and distracted and unsure. He’d lain in bed with his back to her, ashamed and sorry for himself. Ellie turned on the light to look at him. She had her pink silk nightgown on and her face was shiny with moisturizer. She pulled up on one elbow and leaned around him. He saw the creases at her neck and between her breasts, the tiny pleats at her underarms, the little pillow of flesh under her sharp chin, and he thought, She must be seeing the same thing. She snapped off the light and put her hand on his shoulder.
“So what, Ray? You think this is the worst? You think, finally, we’ve gotten to ‘for worse’?”
Maybe not for you, Ray thought.
“It’s not. It’s not better, but it’s not the worse,” she said.
Eleanor slid her hand under the covers and wrapped her fingers around his cock. She gave a little squeeze, like a salute. She pushed the covers back and pressed him onto his back. She talked while she stroked him. She told him about the guy who had come to do the patio and brought his four giant dogs with him; she told him about seeing one of Neil’s friends from high school who’d said, when she asked how his mother was, Great, she’s out on parole; she told him that she’d heard that young men shaved their balls now. Ray lifted his head and asked her if she would like that. I guess I would, she said. Is it unpleasant otherwise? Ray said. Oh, I don’t know, Ellie said. It’s like a mouthful of wet mitten—what do you think? When he stopped laughing, early in the morning, with a faint light falling on Ellie’s silver hair held back with a pink ribbon and her slim, manicured hands, he came.
* * *
Ray followed Macy home from Buck’s. He could see her dark outline in the car when they drove under a streetlight, her right arm up the whole time, talking on her phone. She honked twice when she got to her driveway and pulled in. Their porch light snapped on and the moths gathered. Macy ran onto the porch and Ray could see Neil, in just his underwear, reaching out for her with both arms.
Ray turned left instead of right and parked in front of Randeane’s. From the car, he saw the white edge of her chaise. He saw just the green tips of her slippered feet. He honked twice and drove home.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
My editor, Kate Medina, continues to be not only my brave and erudite captain but a dear friend and wise counselor. My agent, Phyllis Wender, continues to be the standard by which literary agents should be measured; her warm intelligence and steadfastness are legendary.
I am grateful to both the MacDowell Colony and the Yaddo Foundation, as more than a few of these stories were written in those places.
I am blessed with my beloved family of readers, Alexander, Caitlin, and Sarah, all exceptionally literate, all straight talkers, all my favorite people. I am grateful to my friends Kay Ariel and Bob Bledsoe, as well, for their generous criticism and sturdy support and for much more than that. Richard McCann has continued to be my eleventh-hour hero, with timely, stringent, and compassionate criticism. I have also been immeasurably assisted by Jennifer Ferri, who has made my business hers, in the best possible way.
A CONVERSATION WITH AMY BLOOM
Random House Reader’s Circle: In this collection of short stories, you tackle some new themes, notably love in the second half of life, and death. Why did you decide to go in this new direction? How do you see these stories fitting in with your earlier collections?
Amy Bloom: I think that generally the subject chooses the writer, not the other way around. It seems natural, even inevitable, that as I get older certain issues and moments in life that might have been less central to me at thirty-five are now more present, and although a number of the stories in this collection are told from the point of view of younger protagonists, both of the quartets have to do with the passage of time. In the Lionel and Julia quartet, I was particularly interested in ending with a story that was largely focused on the point of view of people who were about to become the patriarchs and matriarchs of a family, having always been seen in these stories as “the kids.”
RHRC: You are known for tackling love’s taboos, particularly when it comes to gender and sexuality. What are some of the taboos you explore in this collection?
AB: The truth is I never think of any subject as taboo. And the things that I think of as truly taboo—pedophilia, sexual violence—I don’t usually write about. As Camus once said, we do not choose whom we love. To me, this seems to be not only the way it is in life but probably the way it should be. I am all for loving relationships in which the couple at the center are a match set in terms of height, weight, color, and socially approved orientation. But it doesn’t strike me as any better or more blessed or more heartwarming than when people who clearly are not a match set on the outside are so clearly meant to be together on the inside.
RHRC: Tell us a little about your choice to write interlocking stories, as opposed to a novel or a single story?
AB: Perhaps one of the more striking aspects of both quartets is that they don’t just cover long periods of time in the life of my characters, they were also actually written over long periods of time—years. One quartet took me seven years to finish and the other sixteen years. Linked short stories are a wonderful way for me to split the difference between the range and scope of a novel and the compression and pace of a short story.
RHRC: The Lionel and Julia story “Sleepwalking” first appeared in your celeb
rated collection Come to Me. What was it like for you as a writer to revisit these characters in this collection? How did your understanding of the characters evolve over time?
AB: Of course I wouldn’t have revisited them if I hadn’t felt they had more stories in them and I could begin to see them in new ways. Two aspects of the quartets that were most gratifying: first, that I think I have become a better writer and am more able to put the skills I have in the service of my characters; and second, as in life, time gives you the opportunity to see events differently and to understand the actors in ways that were not possible the first time around. For example, although I always felt a great deal of sympathy for Julia it was only in the last story that I could really feel both the loss that had shaped her life and her unwillingness to yield to that.
RHRC: Children, stepchildren, and the love between a parent and a child play a central role in many of these stories. At many times in this collection, the love for a child is in conflict with romantic love. Why did you choose to write about how people balance different loves?
AB: When is romantic love not in conflict with a child—if you have children? It is a wonderful, moving, heart-filling experience to sit with the man or woman you love and your beloved children and know that all are happy to be just where they are with each other and loving one another. This doesn’t happen very often. Somebody has taken somebody else’s sweater, somebody has driven the car without permission, somebody is making a terrible choice in a career or fiancé, or someone is ill, or the adults are putting a good face on misfortune for the sake of the beloved children, or the beloved children would rather be somewhere else.… Seems to me that family life is a long ride full of ups and downs, moments of sartori-like bliss, and moments when you feel like you’re in a second-rate sitcom.
RHRC: In the William and Clare stories, you write about the love between two people, but their relationship ripples throughout the lives of their families. You seem to be exploring the way love touches people at their core and also at the more superficial but important edges. Why did you choose to move in this direction?
