There is also a stack of membership forms encouraging us to open our wallets again: it’s twenty-five dollars for a trial church membership. You can go to church for free, but if you join and pay the dues, you can be a part of their Bible study group, youth group, singles group or discussion group.
Joe Natto has disappeared. At the back of the room, I come face-to-face with Tonsure-Head, the guy who first gave me the yellow flyer that morning. He’s alone; I can tell that. He didn’t bring a girlfriend or son with him. He folds a dollar bill and slips it into the slot. Then he leaves. I want to know this man’s story. It’s odd. Two months ago, I thought I was the only one in this city alone. But the more I get out, the more I see that there are other people alone. The thing is, though, they don’t seem to be normal. They all have some sort of problem. I seem like the only normal person who’s alone. Why is that?
I figure that I shouldn’t just walk out of the church. I do have a purpose here, don’t I? I want to expose Natto. I want to stand up and shout, You’re only here to hawk your book! Go on Letterman! I want to tell people just to give their money directly to a boy in the ghetto. But what if this really does make these people feel good, believing in Joseph Natto?
Look at me, wimping out again. Trying to think of a reason not to bust Natto. I keep doing that. I haven’t made one move toward telling Matt’s girlfriend on him, and now I’m wavering on the church, too. Things I thought were wrong a month ago now don’t seem as bad. Am I becoming like everyone else? Just doing what’s easy, and then rationalizing it? Maybe I should keep going to this church to protect the people who come here from being ripped off.
I could use the religious education, anyway. I could say the reason that I never go to church in general is because it’s all bunk. I could say that it’s for idiots. But the truth is, the reason I never go to church is that waking up at nine o’clock on Sunday morning is a goddamn pain in the ass.
“Carrie!”
I whirl around, and some woman is running to a man with a cane. “Harry! Hurry up, we’re in a hurry!”
My hearing must be going.
Back home, the sun is shining in and making square patterns on my rug. I hang up my coat and lie down and curl up in the spot. It’s warm there. I used to do this all the time when I was four, find a sunny spot and curl up in it. I had a cat that liked to do that, too. It liked to come and lie in the sun next to me. It was black, and its name was Midnight. We were supposed to take care of it for a month for friends, but the friends ended up being gone three months, so I started considering it my cat. But then one day I came home from school and it was gone. Its owners had picked it up. I felt lonely being the only one in the sun spot.
After I regroup on the rug, I go to the video store. I haven’t made progress on the classic film list lately. I stroll around, and eventually I come upon Network. But it has taken me a half hour to find something I want to see. I worry that they won’t keep making movies quickly enough to keep up with my lonely nights.
I also manage to find Out of Africa. I take them home, lie in bed on my stomach and watch them back to back.
When Africa’s over, I’m groggy. It’s dark. I look out the window and something startles me.
There are Christmas lights around the Guarinos’ window across the street! We haven’t even hit Thanksgiving yet, and they’ve already started to hang Christmas decorations. But what’s nice about it is it’s an unselfish gesture. The lights are meant for Tom and Jocelyn’s neighbors, not for themselves. They’re telling the rest of us Merry Christmas without a sound.
Maybe the season will put me in a good mood for a change, instead of a stagnant, bland one. Maybe Tom and Jocelyn will have a party for their neighbors and I’ll get to know the people around me.
I’m glad the holidays are coming. I don’t know what I’ll do for Christmas, except see my father, but that in itself will be nice. Holidays are a chance to be kiddish again.
My visit to the Harvard Club the next evening leads me back through Times Square. The street preachers are out in full force again, pointing and sparring with the tourists. I round the corner to 44th Street and see several Ivy League banners billowing above the awnings to their clubs. The Harvard flag is crimson with a large H on it. The face of the club is brick, not the usual harsh pockmarked red brick but a softer pink variety, with borders of beige stone. It pleases me. Perhaps such a moment of happiness, even if it’s fleeting, bodes well. I love old buildings. I love them inside, too. I live for ripped tears of wallpaper and long windows and crystal doorknobs and interior columns. This building has all the indications of possessing such.
I walk up to the front door and a man opens it for me. I feel guilty. I haven’t even joined the club and already they’re waiting on me.
Inside, there’s a fellow at a gold-colored podium. He’s bald, in full crimson garb, and he asks, “Can I help you?”
“I’m here for the reception.”
He breaks into a smile and directs me to my left. What did he think—I was going to break in?
The walls are a sort of red that seems more ruby than crimson, and there are framed black-and-white pictures of old men in suits. I pass a small reading room that holds copies of the campus newspaper. It reminds me that once, when I was a senior, I wrote the paper a letter. They had run an interview with a philosophy professor about situational ethics, and he’d made an argument that I could disprove fairly easily. The letter I wrote was clear, and I told them they should run a correction, but they never got back to me. So I called the editor, and he said that they don’t run corrections unless something is out-and-out wrong—but it was. He said it was a complex point. I guess the staff thought it was easier just to leave something that was flat-out untrue in the paper. Sometimes it seems that even the people who act like they want to get to the truth only want to get to a certain point of the truth, and after that, they just want to make nice.
I return to the hallway and continue toward the room with the mixer. As I near it, the bass pounds my ears, and a loud symphony of voices emanates. Inside, it’s wall-to-wall people in dark suits with drinks in their hands, all talking at once. I can’t make out an audible sentence.
I look around and feel underdressed. I guess all of these people came straight from work. Some have briefcases slung around their shoulders. How old are they, twenty-three?
Even though I thought, or hoped, some people would come to this event alone, everyone seems to have a group. Some are standing in a circle, some are crowding around the bar, some are sitting on the red couches.
If I can get to a corner, the traditional refuge of the shy, I can take stock of the situation. I move to the wall and edge along it. I make it to a corner, near where a group of people is pushing two couches next to a table. “Tell me about your new job!” a long-haired girl says to a guy. Within the same group of friends, another pair is hugging. It occurs to me that for all I know, the eight people on these couches were my year at school, and I knew not one of them. I guess there were thousands of people at Harvard whom I didn’t meet. My father once asked me if I thought I would have been happier at a small school. Honestly, I don’t know which is better: being at a campus with thousands of people and not getting the chance to feel close to any of them, or being at an intimate college with only 400 people and still not meeting anyone you have things in common with because all the people you might have had things in common with were among the thousands who went elsewhere.
I hang back and watch. The lights are dim. The room is smoky and full of perfume. There’s entirely too much perfume in New York. It even gets into the newspapers and magazines.
The group of people closest to me is focused on one girl who keeps talking and making everyone laugh. The majority of the group is men, and I’m impressed that this one girl can hold four men’s attention at once. I’d be too nervous. I’d probably spill my drink or trip over my shoes. I step closer to hear what she’s saying. “So then I said to them, well, I’m not going to stan
d here and watch the two of you throw away the best thing you have in your life. Give me the fucking ceramic Garfield.” Laughter explodes. I don’t know what she’s talking about, but I can laugh, too, so I step closer, near the outside of the circle. That’s what Nora was good at in college: blending into a circle. One guy across from me keeps giving me strange looks, but no one opens up. I decide I’ll count to ten. If no one talks to me by ten, I’ll leave. Any longer would be humiliating.
No one does.
I retreat to my corner. I look up. No one is approaching me. I burrow through my pocketbook, find an ATM receipt and crumple it for later disposal. I look up again. Still, no one is approaching me.
I survey the room. It’s dark and full of chatter. Even nerdy guys with thick glasses and bad posture have their groups. Even among losers, I’m an outcast. I see a Harvard Club application on the floor, a dirty footprint emblazoned across it, so I pick it up.
I finish reading and peer over it. One would think, with all the guys in the world who complain they can’t get a girlfriend, they’d take advantage of someone standing in a corner alone. Maybe they’re just not trying.
The music gets even louder. The smoke hurts my eyes. The bass fills my ears. It’s so loud in this room that I’m not sure how any of these people can have a meaningful discussion. And they certainly can’t meet new people. How could they? Everyone looks similar; why would anyone come over to me or to anyone else here? How would you pick? How can you tell who you’d have anything in common with? This is supposed to be a mixer, but it’s really only about hanging out with people you already know.
I make my way to the bar. There are several people standing against it already, and they motion with their hands to get the bartender’s attention. I get jostled and ignored. I have to stick my elbow over the bar to keep my place. Finally a bartender asks me what I’ll have. Normally I try to order a seltzer in order to avoid paying outrageous bar prices. But I’m irritated so I permit myself red wine, even if it’s eight dollars. After I’ve got the glass in my hand, I feel a little better. The reason I’m not talking to anyone else is that I’m drinking. That’s it.
I put the wine to my lips and look around. I notice that every once in a while, someone disappears down some stairs. After the fourth person heads down, I decide I should see what’s down there.
I make my way through the clusters of suits and trot on down. It’s a comfortable carpeted alcove with two bathrooms. There are five women in line outside the women’s room, and only one guy outside of the men’s. Typical. I get in the women’s line. I think about the times I sat in the bathroom in elementary school to get out of uncomfortable social situations. I always hated when teachers asked us to pick partners, teams, anything. Kids would cluster together immediately like it was a chemical reaction, and I would be left alone. So I’d ask to go to the bathroom, and then I’d sit on the toilet for a while.
Now I am at the Harvard Club, socialization having failed again.
But I notice that the guy standing outside of the men’s room doesn’t go in.
He keeps standing against the wall with his arms folded, staring at the floor. He looks down-to-earth. Short, with light wavy hair and a puggish nose. I could see girls overlooking him because of the shortness. Maybe he’s down here for the same reason I am: to hide from the crowds.
The girl at the front of my line goes in. Pretty soon I’ll be in. I have to figure out something to say to the guy quickly. I look over and smile.
A brief smile crosses his lips. Then he looks away. It’s probably shyness more than snobbery. I certainly have been accused of the latter when the problem was the former.
“Less crowded down here,” I say to him.
He nods. “It is.”
“Hiding out?” I ask.
“For now.”
We’re both silent for a second.
“Have you been to other Harvard Club things?” I ask.
He shakes his head. “This is my first.”
“Seems okay so far,” I say. I smile.
“Yeah,” he says.
He smiles back.
“Beats staying home, I guess,” I say.
Then a girl emerges from the rest room. She says to the guy, “Ready?” and he nods. “See ya,” he says to me, and they disappear up the stairs.
I feel like such an idiot. I enter the bathroom not a moment too soon and lock myself in a stall. I sit on the toilet and stare at the nicks and scratches in the beige stall door. I stare until they fade into a molten manila blur.
Why should I have been foolish enough to think that anyone in the world besides me is alone?
I did say earlier that I’d met a lot of people who were alone lately, but they’re all people who are strange in some way: my lecherous landlord, a meek old bald guy, Ronald the Rice-Haired Milquetoast. No one normal. Then again, maybe I’m not normal. Maybe there’s something wrong with me, and I don’t know it. If I were crazy, I surely wouldn’t know it, right? By definition, I wouldn’t. People who are insane can’t know it, or they’d change their behavior. They think they’re fine, and that everyone else has problems. Just like I think I’m fine, and that everyone else has problems.
The Unabomber, who happened to be a Harvard graduate by the way, was awfully smart, and he thought he had all the answers. He really did think he was doing the right thing by sending explosives through the mail. He was sure that no one else understood the importance of what he was doing, and that he had to do it.
Am I insane? What if I am? What should I do?
Now I’m scaring myself. Maybe my sitting on the toilet, thinking these thoughts, is more evidence that I’m mentally ill.
But I’m questioning my sanity, and maybe that means I’m sane. Only a sane person would do that. I doubt, therefore I am.
The Unabomber probably never believed he was anything less than sane. If he’d put his actions to logic, they wouldn’t have held up. Nothing I do hurts people. But how do I know that that’s the logic system I should go by? It’s not written anywhere. I just decided on it. Well, wouldn’t Petrov know if I was insane? I’m not even on medication. Yes, I’m okay. Calm down.
I am going to pick myself up and walk out of this bathroom with my head held high. So what if the automatons here don’t want to know me? It only proves I was right to spend so much time inside my apartment in the first place.
I ascend, and I dance through assailing elbows until I’m out the door.
Times Square is awash in lights of every color imaginable: purple, orange, blue. I wonder what it’s like to work there, with pink or green light constantly splashing all over your desk. I descend into the subway and return to my apartment. It feels good to be away from the crowds and noise and smoke.
I climb outside onto the fire escape, taking my journal. The air smells like burning leaves. I inhale deeply.
I sit down on the frozen metal. The moon is out. I have always liked my view from the back. It’s only a view of the rear ends of other apartment buildings, but it doesn’t matter. Here, nothing is spruced up or renovated—it’s tangled jungles of metal and concrete and brick and stone, just like a hundred years ago. A lot of the fire escapes have painted-over placards saying there’s a fine for putting anything there that obstructs mobility. I would like to know if this has ever been enforced.
A rich tomato smell wafts under my nose. Someone must be downstairs stirring sauce. I take a good whiff. I wonder if I can find this person and knock on her door. I wonder if she’d invite me in to eat. Wouldn’t that be nice? Maybe I would find out she was my long-lost aunt and we would gab for hours, making up for years of lost time.
I could write about this proposition in my journal. I could even make up a short story about it. I’ve never written a complete short story, even in college. But my fingers are too cold to write. I park my journal between my feet and decide to sit and think.
The Harvard party was supposed to be my avenue to meet smart people. I feel like a failure. But the di
fference is all one person. If there had been one person at Harvard who’d thought I was great for four years, I would have been okay. We would have been two happy, comfortable people and then drawn others to us by extension. If I’d known one person at this party who’d been committed to staying by me the whole night, we could have joined other groups easily.
But I didn’t know one person.
The episode with the guy in the bathroom reminds me of a similar embarrassment during my freshman year. There was a study break at one of the lounges. I walked across campus to attend. The room was very Ivy Leagueish, with dark wooden faux columns in the walls and long windows with longer white drapes. Some people were sitting at tables, and the rest were milling about or hanging out by the snack table. It seemed as if not one person was at the event alone. I didn’t see anyone who looked familiar. I decided that I would plant myself at a small empty table that was not far from where the food was. That way, maybe someone would sit down next to me.
I sat at my table looking out at people, my chin in my hands, purposely trying to appear ready to talk. There was a table about forty-five degrees to my elbow that had three guys and a girl at it. I noticed out of the corner of my eye that once in a while, the guy sitting closest to me would look at me instead of listening to his friends. I pretended I didn’t notice and kept looking straight ahead, but I was aware of him.
He looked at me again. I kept my eyes on the buffet table.
He looked again.
I thought about how I should act. I moved my hair from behind my ear, because my hair looks better when it’s not tucked back. I made sure my feet were under the table, since I was wearing ratty old shoes (I won’t walk blocks in high heels. I’m sorry).
I kept my eyes on the buffet table.
Finally the guy tapped me on the shoulder.
“Hey,” he said.
I smiled.
“Can we steal your chair?”
He took a chair from the table I was at and dragged it over so some girl could sit down.
Carrie Pilby Page 16
