Little Reef and Other Stories

by Michael Carroll

  Diane shopped the sites pricing rental cars and monitoring ticket prices every day or two, waiting for rates to drop a couple hundred dollars. Today, a Tuesday, Diane found her airfare and pounced. It gave her a sense of accomplishment better than Holly’s so-called cascading orgasms.

  Then she got the email from Taylor—though she never gave her email to Gary’s students. Gary’s handiwork, thought Diane. Taylor had written: “Thinking about you. Can I come over?”

  Diane was frightened by impromptu visits. She was frightened by insurance companies, by state troopers on the interstate when she drove to the mall four miles over the limit. An hour before the mail came she worried an exorbitant gynecologist’s bill would arrive marked “Patient Responsibility.” When it didn’t, but brought only more junk, she was relieved. She attacked her next task with this foolish-feeling satisfaction. She confessed her folly to Gary, hoping he might make something fictional out of it, something that said yes, she was along for the same ride with him, but Gary was not that kind of writer. Lately, he flirted with genre, trying to dull it down and show it for the dopey entertainment it was. Reading should be mentally aerobic, a strenuous and daunting activity. Readers who might complain that he confused them were not his ideal readers.

  Diane stared at Taylor’s email. It made her uncomfortable but strangely galvanized.

  “Hi. Give me an hour,” she typed. She took out the caps and punctuation and hit Send.

  She cleaned a little. She knew she could have been a Taylor. At Taylor’s age, she’d had the means. Diane’s father had made a fortune in construction by helping turn central Florida into a gaudy vacationland. The big doughy English children she saw in the Orlando airport each time did look happy to be there. Their sunburnt parents in their shell suits seemed to be having a good time, too. Nothing about the hawking of this nonsense bothered her. People did what they chose to do—until, according to her mother, there wouldn’t be any more choosing left to do: fire or ice, one. “Those orange groves they tore down,” her mother had said, “they weren’t the first Eden.”

  Satisfied, you stopped noticing that you were only surrounded by other satisfied people.

  She was glad she’d escaped Florida, all expressways and interstates. Gary might want to try Maine some year, its curving two-lane roads and rustic countryside. They both found boring restful, but the trip across the Atlantic each way was exhausting and disorienting. After they got over the jet lag (Gary was better at that), they slipped into the same quietly busy roles as the ones they took during the regular school year. She drove down to the market with just enough French to ask for what she needed and pay and say goodbye. Gary’s French, which he only practiced in museums and restaurants, astounded her. The French translated every word by Gary; the reviews he got for his short, experimental novels also astounded her, if she comprehended them correctly. She shopped in the cheerfully businesslike market, and he worked up in his room all through the bucolic, radiant mornings— and in the afternoons they took sightseeing trips, Diane at the wheel.

  At the door, Taylor arranged her cute face into a mortified mug, saying, “Don’t be mad at Gary, please? I begged him for your email. Anyway, I’d’ve called, but email’s more personal.”

  An odd thought, but then what was writing except a direct line into someone’s head? No irony, no pauses. Emails had a flattening, innocent, persuasive effect, and Diane said, “Don’t be silly, sweetheart. Now, we’re going to have lunch in a while. Are tuna sandwiches okay?”

  “I shouldn’t cheat like that,” said Taylor, “but it’s so fun. Fun to be bad with you.”

  “Oh, darling. I completely forgot!” said Diane. “Well, I still have tofu in the fridge …”

  “Give me a hug,” the girl said, and Diane hugged her. Taylor whimpered: “Oh my God!”

  “What?” Diane said, freezing in midsqueeze. It was as though the girl had flatlined.

  “Nothing. It just feels good, like something I can totally honestly trust, I can count on.”

  The girl smelled like tea roses, her shampoo or soap. It was stronger than that, a perfume.

  “Come on in. Would you like some iced tea?”

  “I’d love some iced tea. No dead animals involved in that, right?”

  “I left them out,” Diane said, thinking happily about her clean kitchen.

  “I wanted to bring you something.”

  “Oh, that wasn’t necessary. But how thoughtful of you.”

  “But they didn’t have it. Aren’t tropical fruits always supposed to be in season? Jeez.”

  “Well, I happen to be sensitive to fruit sugars. Berries not so much.”

  “I wanted to bring papayas and mangos, but all they had were bananas, prosaic bananas.”

  They stood on either side of the breakfast bar, Diane loading up her woven bamboo tray.

  “What perfume is that?” Diane said, now reminded of her mother’s room freshener.

  “It’s from Paris by somebody called Annick Goutal, some dude or chick. Annick Goutal, is that a guy or a girl’s name? A good, dear friend bought it then brought it back to me. The fuck knows. Are you ready? It’s Ce soir ou jamais.”

  “Your pronunciation’s a lot better than mine, that’s for sure. I remember it from a shop in the village near where Gary and I rent. Oh and look, what’s this? Is it a nice, clean ashtray?”

  “You’re so awesome. Yes, an ashtray for me and my filthy habit, cute, wonderful Diane.”

  Gary had folded and rolled the Ping-Pong table to the side of the porch. They had a good view from the padded wicker couch. Autumn bulb plantings still bursting, bushes neatly pruned.

  “Taylor, you have something on your mind.”

  “You’re perfect,” the girl said. “My mother is perfect, but not like you. Lainie’s weirdly perfect. Meanwhile she doesn’t need to be. If I were in her shoes, I wouldn’t try to be perfect.”

  “Your mother, Lainie did you say, should not try to be perfect in what way?”

  “Just for example, how it’s not necessary to be best friends with your daughter? Jeez.”

  At least Taylor seemed to be saying that she didn’t think of Diane as maternal.

  “Gary never really wanted kids,” Diane sighed, “and I couldn’t have cared either way.”

  Taylor laughed and started to smoke. In Diane’s day around the Columbia library, it was cloves or Gitanes. Taylor’s pack had an Indian-logo’d label, those new organic delivery systems of toxins and early death, but the smoke was fragrant. Diane’s father’s had smelled like clogged mufflers. Taylor blew it toward the line of hydrangea bushes just outside the screening. Nothing could kill hydrangeas, not even Diane’s dad’s Winston smog. Taylor inhaled, exhaled peacefully.

  “Are you ready?” Taylor said. She had shiny hair striped bronze, black, and platinum, this new oblivious fashion, part ironical and part I-really-mean-it, I-own-this. Right? This is me.

  “Is it news?” Diane then said, recomposing herself, “I mean, good news or bad news?”

  “Diane, I’m—don’t get mad or think I’m insane—but I’m thinking of getting married.”

  “Why would I get mad?” Diane said. “But you’re still thinking? Taylor, are you sure?”

  “Not a hundred percent.”

  “Do you have to—is it so urgent that you have to decide immediately?”

  “Oh, it’s not anything like that,” said Taylor. “It’s just this dude I know from back home, who’s gay. Jesse. He summers in Bar Harbor with his rich-bitch relatives, but they’re all great.”

  “I see,” said Diane drolly, only she didn’t see. “And do they know he’s gay? He’s gay?”

  “Sure they know. Diane, you’d know right away! He’s not femmylike but you’d know.”

  “Is he cute? Why am I asking you that? Sweetheart, why would you marry a gay man?”

  “We’ve just always known. We’re actually in love, best friends. And yes, Jesse’s hot.”

  “But have you ever slept with
Jesse?”

  “All the time. It’s so much fun! He’s so demonstrative, so there, so present. So verbal.”

  Someone had hit Diane with a ball-peen hammer, wham. That’s what it felt like. Dizzy.

  “Not to mention oral,” Taylor then added. “Yeah, Jesse likes to keep it overall oral.”

  “Which you really didn’t have to mention,” Diane said. “But I asked for it, so go on …”

  “Ha ha! Totally chill. You’re so chill. Okay now Taylor, back up. Back to base, lady.”

  “You’re completely serious,” said Diane, feeling old and nervous and somehow afraid.

  Taylor nodded and smudged out her cigarette.

  “Okay, you really want to know? We’re best friends and I don’t really care what he does. As long as he plays safely. I might have my own fun, but it makes sense: we’re friends. Most of the people I know don’t really have true friends, just people they hang out with. Not people they trust. But Jesse and I talk in bed—we’re always talking. Plus he reads, his whole family reads.”

  Judging from some of the people in that class she’d known, Diane seriously doubted this.

  “Well, it must be interesting,” said Diane, nodding meekly. “I think it must be different.”

  “Coming from my family? My dad and I are the only readers in the whole family tree.”

  Gary wasn’t gay; if he had been, or if Diane had suspected he was, she never would have gotten engaged to him. That much she knew, she thought. Diane used to be so incredibly horny.

  “But honestly,” she said, “even if you say Jesse is cute, and the sex is good? Good?—”

  “But the freedom. Oh, God. Guys I’ve dated. Boys. They’re such prats, and brats, they want you all to themselves. Look at me, I’m not something for up on the shelf. I’m adorable but let’s get real, a trophy wife? Not Taylor. It needs to be more chill than that. I want my liberty.”

  “Honey, freedom isn’t exactly the first word I think of when I hear the word marriage.”

  “But isn’t freedom what you have with Gary? I mean, that’s what I get from you guys.”

  “But you always compromise in the end,” said Diane. “Almost always.”

  “One compromises in every situation in life,” said Taylor, an Edith Wharton matron now.

  “To be fair, you’re talking to the wrong person. I barely even remember being single.”

  “What are you really thinking?” Taylor said, nodding importantly.

  “I wonder about your future. Yours is particularly bright, Taylor.”

  “For which I will not apologize, and which I know and understand utterly.”

  “And—” Diane bit off the end of that word—she was flustered, and repeated, “And—”

  Usually they had more humility, the talented ones. She’d seen them come and she’d seen them ride off bound for bigger things. Taylor put up the hood on her sleek cashmere hoodie top.

  “I don’t believe you gave up your freedom, Diane,” she said, lighting up again.

  “Well. Certainly not the freedom to choose. By the way, I’m worried you’re about to set yourself on fire. Cashmere isn’t exactly flame-retardant. But we should have lunch, Taylor.”

  Taylor said, “Let’s have our net-caught tuna. Let’s kill a few more dolphins.”

  Rising, Diane said, “Actually everything is line-caught and dead and ready to go. I don’t use canned tuna. That might be the only nice thing about me. No no, no need to protest …”

  In the kitchen, Taylor said, “We have the freshest line-caught fish all summer in Maine.”

  “So you’ve been holding out on me,” said Diane cleverly. “You do cheat sometimes.”

  “Sure, just not lobster,” Taylor said, scooping Diane’s salad onto her bread, then stacking on top of it the complementing tomato and avocado Diane had carefully sliced. Immigrant labor, the girl might have added. “You and Gary should come to Maine this summer. You’d love it.”

  “I’m afraid Gary doesn’t like varying his summer writing routine by much.”

  “You could stay at the Bunches’ family compound—where they have all these houses? It wouldn’t be any problem, and Jesse would love it. In the old days, they had their own railcars to bring them up for the summer. They don’t have them now, of course, just these cool old houses.”

  “It sounds lovely, with the wild blueberries and seafood you hear so much about.”

  “Diane, oh. It’s so beautiful! Hate to be a booster, but Maine in the summer …”

  “What I wanted to say,” Diane began, “is it’s not so much freedom you give up as the will to try new things that require you to go away. Last night you mentioned your Key West idea.”

  “Jesse and I cooked that one up together. It’s where a lot of his family go in the winter.”

  “Gary and I have been there for a conference,” said Diane without mentioning the gays.

  “I’m ambitious,” Taylor said, “and Jesse wants kids, too—has to have kids, really, to pass everything on to, not least the Bunch name. But I’d also want to work, not just write.”

  “How will you write, waitressing for sports fishermen and dropping Bunches, and what if you have to have four Bunches before you get a boy? The old conundrum of the Salic Laws …”

  “The what?”

  “That’s why the French never had queens on the throne,” said Diane. “They were around for mating purposes, to give the king his male heirs—since only men know how to do whatever.”

  “I don’t know what to do with that,” Taylor said, talking with her mouth full. She did not seem hurt but charged forward. “See Jesse and I are different. It’s not just about love—although love is a huge part of it. In our generation we don’t see differences of orientation, just like we try not to see color. I’d go so far as to say we just don’t see it. A lot of us in this generation question whether there are any gay-straight differences. We don’t subscribe to labels, is what I’m saying.”

  “‘We don’t subscribe to labels.’” said Diane. “‘Don’t pin labels on us, we’re special.’”

  “Are you mimicking me, Diane?”

  “You’re mimicking us,” Diane said. “That was us. We said that about no labels first, and it wasn’t true then and just by dint of time and civil rights it isn’t any truer now. It’s a myth.”

  She wanted to throw her lunch in the trash and go upstairs until this silly child left.

  “Time for lunch with the Bunches,” Gary’d probably say, “lunch with the Bunch bunch.”

  “That’s bitchy,” Taylor said, dropping her gaze. “And I think unfair and wrongheaded.”

  “Taylor,” said Diane, rinsing the mayonnaise knife under the tap to use it for the hummus spread she liked, “we used to say that sentence exactly back in the eighties. MTV, David Bowie, Flock of Seagulls, it was this amazing, brand-new concept called Androgyny. ‘Hey big corporate guy, don’t tell us how to live! Don’t label us for your marketing strategies, old man!’ Gahh! ”

  “But maybe we’re the first to mean it. Did you ever think of it that way? Maybe you’re just bitter. Maybe you feel like you missed out on something, I dunno. Diane! Please.”

  “I need a break,” said Diane. “Could somebody just give me a fucking break?”

  Diane wasn’t even going to wish her luck. Minutes ago she’d been thinking of opening a bottle of chardonnay to relax the mood a little, but now she wouldn’t waste it. She drummed her fingers restlessly on the breakfast bar. Her sandwich was ready, but how to enjoy it now? It was too perfect not to enjoy under optimal circumstances. She’d grilled the tuna. She looked at it—a perfect thing she’d made. She looked at it wanly. She couldn’t stop looking at it, hating herself.

  Taylor said, “Wow. I mean, wow.”

  “I’m going to go upstairs and lie down now,” Diane said rustily, making a good move.

  From her bed Diane listened for the front door, and when she heard it gently close a few minutes later, a little relief came to her. Jus
t a little. It didn’t pay, and she’d never do it again, to entertain these obnoxious, self-loving kids. She was getting the burning again, a little in from the left side of her groin. The bladder or the kidneys, something shooting down from the kidneys and expressing itself closer to where everything had an outlet—a referred pain. Back to the doctor. She’d dilute pure cranberry juice, gulping that for the rest of the day. Brewer’s Yeast tablets, acidophilus, no citrus, no coffee. To bed early, then Gary’d come in from bowling. He and some of the faculty bowled on Tuesdays.

  A little time passed. She’d napped. Diane woke up refreshed but in a state of uncertainty.

  She had hidden her Bible. She didn’t believe in its myths—just the essential wisdom of yearning expressed especially in the Twenty-third Psalm. Gary had liked it, too, and once she’d asked him what he thought it meant by that one line about the rod and the staff: “They comfort me,” it went.

  “Is that patriarchal Old Testament might on the one hand and peace or love on the other?” she’d said, waiting. He’d come in from the bathroom into the center of the bedroom then put his hands on his hips and stared at her like she was this complete stranger suddenly. “Well. Is it?”

  “I don’t know, Di. It’s just language. All it is is incredible, noble imagery and poetry.”

  “Just language?” she had said, thinking that he was indeed a stranger to her then. “Is it?”