by Lorrie Moore
I take Gerard’s hand. “ ‘But soft, what light through yonder window breaks?’ ”
“Shit,” says Gerard, glancing over his shoulder. He picks up my empty drink and chugs it back. The ice cubes knock against his teeth and upper lip. “ ‘Churl,’ ” he says, putting the glass back down with a clunk. “ ‘Drunk all and left no friendly drop to help me out?’ ”
When we are depressed, we quote Shakespeare, to put things in perspective. Between us we know about five lines, which limits our perspective.
“How come you’re always Juliet and I’m always Romeo?” I moan.
“That, my dear,” says Gerard, getting up, “is the question of the century. We shall take it up anon.”
“A nun?” I bat my eyelashes, place my hands in prayer position.
“You have a silly brain,” he says, and tweaks my nose, this new habit of his.
“I have a silly brain?” I act appalled. I cross my eyes, spread my lips crazily, pull my hair up on end. I want to be happy.
“Bonne nuit,” he waves and shakes his head. Some of the pink has left his eyes. He is smiling.
“Ennui.” I wave back.
“Mom?” Georgie has switched the light on in her room.
“Yeah?” I walk in and she is sitting on the edge of her bed with nothing on but her underpants. The edges of her hair are damp and sticking to her face like the chic hairstyles of 1930 or 1963. Her skin is white and warm as bread.
“Why did you take your pajamas off, honey?”
“Did Mrs. Kimball go home?”
“Yes, she did. Aren’t you feeling well?” In sickness and in sickness, till death do us part.
“I can’t sleep,” she says.
“I noticed. How come?” I locate her nightgown underneath her pillow and smooth her hair back with it, like a towel.
“I dunno.”
“You don’t know?”
“Uh-uh. Mary Merwin is going to have a baby brother or a baby sister.”
“Who’s Mary Merwin?”
“She’s a girl.”
I help her get back into her nightgown. “You know, it’s turning into winter out there.”
“Mr. Winter-binter.”
She’s not sleepy.
I stand up and do my Statue of Sleep-Liberty imitation. Yawning and holding a torch: “ ‘Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free.’ ”
George smiles and I lean over and give her a puffle, something my mother used to do with us: press mother’s mouth against child’s neck and blow out air. It’s warm and wet and tickles. George tenses, shoulders up by her ears in anticipation, her whole body in a scrinch—then she giggles and relaxes. “Do it again,” she says, and I do it twice more.
“See you tomorrow, schminker-schmunker,” I say, love dissolving language into funny sounds, non-words.
“See you tomorrow, schminkie-schmunkie,” she giggles.
I wrinkle my nose, make a face. She sticks out her tongue and makes a humming sound. I blow her a kiss from the doorway, and she does a Bronx cheer in parody, an arm puffle, and I turn off the light.
Herman—
Nice poem. I like especially the part about the “bouquet of irises gooey and rotted like the dead heads of birds” and the way “limp panting tongues” resonates at the end. Technical point: You cannot say “to lay down” unless you mean to copulate with feathers. You must learn lay from lie before you can graduate. (In addition to the swim test there will be a lay detector test.) Otherwise, fine.
B.
Gerard is having some hot affair with a woman named Merrilee. He thinks he may be in love.
“Arouse by any other name is still arouse,” I say. “Can I get—yeah, the ketchup. Thanks.”
“She ought to have a sign across her pelvis that reads ‘Abandon all hope, you who enter here.’ ” Gerard stuffs an egg into his beard.
“Personally, I always liked the one in The Wizard of Oz better: ‘I’d turn back if I were you.’ ”
Gerard looks at me from over his coffee cup, sets it down with a chipping clink, and sighs in joy. Gerard never sighs in joy. “I swear, it’s like sleeping with a Playboy magazine.” He smiles contentedly.
“Yeah, my brother used to do that,” I say. “Only with him it was really a magazine.” Under his bed my brother Louis had more pictures of nude women than an art museum. I remember hearing my mother say to him once in a loud, scolding whisper: “Louis! Don’t play with your genitals!” which I thought was the same word as gentiles—leaving me greatly bewildered as to whom we were supposed to play with.
“Well, Gerard,” I say, leaning back and fishing through my purse for cigarettes. “Congratulations.”
I am driving home from the supermarket. It took much longer than I would have liked. George wandered off by herself to stare at the candy, while I loaded up on canned goods and had my fruit weighed—something vaguely sexual-sounding, something that Eleanor might say. I also had to spend too much time in the meat department, having a turkey sliced in half (also something Eleanor might say). Roasting only half a turkey and freezing the other half is a trick I learned from my mother, something for small and/or budget-impaired holidays. The butcher takes it in the back room, where there are carcasses, fish smells, and lots of white jackets, and where he has some sort of electric blade that whips through the bones and the plastic wrapper. Then he loosely ties the two halves back together with string and brings them out and grins and thrusts them at you.
By the time we get home it’s a dark, denimish twilight. George has chocolate in the chap of her lips.
“Georgie, can you help me with the groceries?” I lean over and unlock the door.
“Yup,” she says, putting her mittens on.
I get out, go around back, unlock the hatch. I hear the telephone ringing in the house, grab a bag, and bound up the back steps into the kitchen. I put the bag down on the counter and it slips and falls into the sink, but no matter.
I want it to be Darrel. “Hello?” I’m breathless, I think from the dash in.
“Hi, it’s me,” says Gerard. “I was just about to hang up. Did you just get in?”
“Hi. Yeah,” I say, trying to hide my disappointment like a venereal disease, like someone sick from love. “Listen, can I phone you back? I’m bringing groceries in right now.”
“Actually, Benna my love, in about sixty seconds I’m leaving town for a family Thanksgiving with Maple at his parents’. I just wanted to phone and say bye.”
“Yeah, well: Have a good Thanksgiving, Gerard.”
“You, too,” says he. And then we hang up. I sigh and begin to pull groceries out of the sink, when I hear Georgianne crying outside. I hurry back out and see her sitting on the steps in the cold, sobbing into her knees. “Georgianne, honey, what’s the matter?” I say, sit next to her, put my arms around her and she tilts and leans into me, sobbing harder. I look and see that the bottom of a grocery bag she has struggled with has apparently ripped and various groceries including oranges and the two turkey halves, now unstrung and separated, have formed a small scatter about the driveway.
“Mom,” wails George, lifting her face and pointing out at the driveway. “Mom, I broke the turkey!”
Thanksgiving itself is not so cute. Almost everyone I know—Darrel and Gerard—have gone visiting moms and pops.
For dinner at my house it’s just Eleanor, George, and I. George is cranky and doesn’t set the table properly. “George,” I remind her, “the forks go on the left.”
“They don’t have to if they don’t want to,” she says, all knuckles and recalcitrance and averted gaze.
I’ve spent five hours peeling and chopping chestnuts for stuffing, while various parades have been blaring from the TV in the living room. Eleanor arrived an hour ago and has been helping me; now she’s at the table stirring chives into the sour cream so that we can eat elegant baked potatoes. My cuticles are shredded and sore; I shake a finger at Georgianne. “Don’t give me any lip, youn
g lady.”
George makes a face. “Don’t give me any lip, young mleh-mleh.”
I put down the nutcracker I’m holding, bend over, grab her wrist, drag her near. “Do you understand?”
George pulls her wrist and shouts, “Ow,” howls as if she’s been mortally wounded, something she’s staged for Eleanor’s benefit. Then she runs to Eleanor’s chair, stands next to it, and both of them are just there, staring at me from across the table, their eyes swirling far away like the surfaces of four complicit moons, four sour apples, four angry gods, four angry oh-my-gods, with their arms hugging, their mouths hung open, rubbery with flabbergast.
“Are you all right?” Eleanor asks later.
“I’m fine,” I snap, lift plum pudding out of the oven, mix hard sauce with difficulty, drinking most of the brandy myself.
We eat dinner uncomfortably, a ritual we are bad at; all dissembling and irony, we are doing imitations of other people at Thanksgiving and we do them feebly, looking around, like kids from Tomaston not knowing what fork to use.
After dinner George and Eleanor play cards in the living room. They talk in low tones. I’m in the kitchen and can’t hear what they’re saying.
When it starts to get dark outside, Eleanor has to go. She comes into the kitchen and puts her arm around my waist. “Do you need any help?” and I say no. We hug and she says she has to get going, George has destroyed her in twelve straight rummy games, the girl’s a killer.
“I know,” I say.
George and Eleanor say good-bye by laughing and pretending to sock one another in the stomach.
By nightfall George is still not speaking to me. She has gone outside, gotten on her bike, driven to the edge of our property and the Shubbys’ and remained there, arms folded.
“George, get in here,” I call from the front door. I have on only a light sweater. George has crookedly donned earmuffs and an unzipped jacket, no mittens.
She refuses. She re-folds her arms and tells me she’s running away. She’s straddled the bar of the bike; it’s too big for her.
“On your bike?” I shout.
“Yup, and I want my bank book this instant,” she shouts. “I’m not on your property, so don’t worry.”
“George, please.” My knees are rags, my head mush, my life chestnut dressing chopped for hours and hours. Is this my daughter? I don’t recognize her. I close the door, but don’t lock it. I leave her, go upstairs, and climb into bed with my clothes on and my shoes.
At five-thirty in the morning I’m up, downstairs, boiling water and pouring it over oatmeal. Though rumpled I am already dressed, this is easy, this amuses me. In the living room Georgianne is on the sofa, asleep with her earmuffs still on.
I look out the window. She has left her bike fallen on the Shubbys’ property. The streetlight is still on. I start to turn away, back to my oatmeal, when I see her, the woman with the bathrobe out in the middle of the street again, with two children and a dog, and they are waving, though the dog sees something and runs after it and the children say something to each other, take each other’s hands and walk off in another direction, and the woman is left standing alone, still waving, dauntless, happy to see me.
November twenty-ninth is my birthday. I have an ache in my wisdom tooth. Darrel is supposed to be back from his parents’ house in New Jersey and is supposed to take me out to dinner.
I count too heavily on birthdays, though I know I shouldn’t. Inevitably I begin to assess my life by them, figure out how I’m doing by how many people remember; it’s like the old fantasy of attending your own funeral: You get to see who your friends are, get to see who shows up.
Eleanor has to be away for the day but she drops by early in the morning to give me a beautiful piece of pottery with zigzags. It seems expensive, as solid solitary objects often do, though I know nothing about pottery. Georgianne has smiled at me, kissed me, made me a card. It has three construction paper panels: The first has a flower in a flower pot; the second has the same flower in a flower pot, only this time the flower has grown; in the final panel the flower has grown so much you can’t even see it—only the stem and the pot. At the bottom she has scrawled in crayon: “My love just grows and grows and grows for you. Happy Birthday. Your Daughter, Georgianne Michelle Carpenter.” It’s the exact same card design she used last year—an idea filched from a children’s magazine. Apparently she thinks I would have forgotten that she gave it to me, assumes adults don’t really take that much notice of children and that therefore she can get away with this theft and redundancy. I kiss her. I thank her. We are friends again, funny friends. I nibble on her head and say, “I chews you.” She giggles, brings her shoulders up to her ears in a lovely shrug-hunch.
In the kitchen we eat ice cream. I can’t get it together to make a cake.
· · ·
Darrel gives me a kiss with much rump-rubbing and torso-pressing. I haven’t seen him since before Thanksgiving; this feels nice; and though he could have phoned at least once this feels like love what do I know.
“I missed you,” he says in what I deem a heartfelt way.
We are in the car, driving. Darrel’s driving.
“Where are we going for dinner?” I ask. It’s getting darker earlier these days. “You’re not losing an hour, you’re gaining a sun,” I always tell my classes in the spring when the clocks get set ahead again.
“A little place out past the mall. We just keep going straight.”
“I hope it’s not that cynical Chinese place.”
“What cynical Chinese place?”
“That place with the ferns and all that cheap French wine.”
“No, this is a new place. I’ll tell you: It’s called Fig’s.”
“Oh, Gerard’s been there,” I say. “He says it’s nice,” and then suddenly I know what this is: a surprise party. I know it. I’m sure of it.
“Is this a surprise party?” Now I will watch Darrel lie. When he says no, I will study him, watch how he does it; from here on in I will know what he does when he lies, how he sets his face, how he moves his mouth, I will know his lie look, his lie voice, his lie words, though he won’t know I’m gathering this intelligence; nonetheless, I must gather.
“No,” says Darrel, and because we’re stopped for a light I can turn and see his face fall into a configuration of mature concern, of heartfeltedness. He reaches over and attempts to squeeze my left buttock, though mostly the car seat’s in the way.
“I just want to take you to a place you’ve never been to before.”
“Did you sleep with someone over Thanksgiving?” It’s a long light, and I watch his face.
“Benna,” he scolds. And then smiles, slightly self-conscious, shakes his mature, concerned, heartfelt head, and pinches me gently in the hip.
“Surprise!” shouts everyone. There is Gerard and Maple and some people I don’t know, some friends of Gerard, why does Gerard always have friends I don’t know. They wanted to go to a party; I’m only the excuse; I feel bashful and hide my face in Darrel’s sleeve as if I were Georgianne, then lift it out again. There are a few affectionate laughs and “Aw’s.” I look along their faces, and suddenly I see Verrie. She looks beautiful and stands and we hug tight.
“God, you look great,” I gasp.
“It’s California,” she says. “I hate it. Hate brings out my youthful glow.”
“Not me,” I say. “Hate makes weight,” and I puff out my cheeks and laugh but I have indeed gained weight should I care.
Fig’s is orange and square with several cigarette machines. It looks like the FVCC faculty lounge. My eyes feel scrappy and splotched. Verrie’s in town for a day, she says.
Gerard kisses me, brings me a chair. “Happy Birthday, Benna. Were you surprised?”
“Oh, yeah,” I say.
Gerard gives Darrel a friendly tap. “Good work,” he says.
“It was nothing,” says Darrel, all male conspiracy. I feel manipulated, described in the third person. Regardless of ho
w you try to love them, men always return to one another in the end.
Eight people around a table. Introductions. Names like Pooky and Cappy. (No Merrilee.) Drinks like scotch. Presents like books. Food like steaks and chops. Why was Joan of Arc luckier than Mary Queen of Scots? Because Joan got a hot stake and Mary only got a cold chop. Cappy howls, spills a drink. Jokes like that.
There is a birthday cake. Candles like spikes in a large 34. Now being in my thirties is getting serious. Now the second number is larger than the first. Someone gives me a card that says, “You’re not getting older, you’re getting bitter.” Darrel leans over and kisses me.
Gerard also leans over and kisses me, apologizes for the birthday card, reminds me not to drink too much I have to teach tomorrow, says, jokingly, “You’re almost as drunk as I am,” and soon Gerard and I are up and doing Motown Shakespeare. Verrie has requested it. “As you from crimes would pardoned be / Let your indulgence set me free why don’t you babe.” We do footwork and spins like the Temptations.
All the world’s a stage we’re going through.
The ants are fewer, sluggish and wintry, perhaps swacked with schnapps. Some of their bodies are tinged with gray. They stumble under worm husks, still scale the stucco. The crack has reached the rear kitchen window, and the sky spits snow. Madame Charpentier has a new black tangle at her throat. Her children have mustaches.
Eleanor is back with Newton and has changed her mind about Italy. I tell her again about going to the Caribbean with George. “Wanna come?” I ask. “It might be fun.”
“Not me,” she says. “I’ll throw the going-away party.” She toasts me with her coffee cup. “Happy going away.”
“Please, I’m not going away yet.” I nibble at my cuticle.
“Sorry,” says Eleanor, proposing a new toast. “Happy will be going away.”
