by Julia Slavin
I lifted it out, the other objects collapsing together, and held it in my hands. I fingered the material and brought it to my face. I could isolate smells: attic must was predominant, but then honeysuckle (my mother’s perfume), Shalimar (my grandmother’s), catalpa, urine, and sweat. I rubbed the material some more between my fingers, got the old rhythm going, felt the ancient blister rising on my thumb. I was surprised at how effective it was, the instant relief from the sadness that had filled the house for so long.
Of course I realized the absurdity of it, a forty-six-year-old man with his blanket. I pulled my thumb out of my mouth and piled the objects back in the box, laying the blanket on top. But try as I might I couldn’t get the flaps to close. I left the box open and slid it under the wardrobe rack with my foot. The attic fan pushed a breeze into the sweltering room. I opened my shirt and let the air dry the sweat on my chest and under my arms.
As I turned to head downstairs, I felt something catch me around the ankle and pull. It was a worn strand of yarn that had unraveled from the blanket. I kicked off my loafer and rolled the yarn off my foot. My shirt was drenched. I took it off and dried my back. And as I turned again to leave, I felt a tightening around my other ankle. Another piece of yarn had attached itself. I looked over at the box. The blanket was creeping up over the top, rolling toward me, slapping against my feet and rising up my legs. I lay on the floor and felt the blood rushing to my head. It wrapped itself across my chest and waist. My eyes glazed and I was taken someplace, to a crevice of a memory. I lay there, covered, for hours, until I said, No more, and left the attic, locking all the doors.
Later, when I woke after a feverish dream, I saw that the blanket had found its way into the bed next to me. I yielded. I had to. I rubbed my face in its softness, breathed in the smell, and tangled my fingers in the loose weave, on and on.
So it continued. When I woke in a sweat, there it was, wrapped around me. No matter where I put it, hid it, stuffed it, it always found me. It came creeping back in the dark; out of the blackness I could see it crawling toward me, inching up, rising on the bed, unfolding on my chest, and I would say no to all of it: to the blanket, to my fingers caressing the material, to my thumb that went in my mouth. I’d strip it off my pajamas, the room so dry in the morning heat that the air would fill with a shower of crackling static electrical sparks. I’d shove it in a drawer, exhausted, panting, disgusted with myself, swearing that next time I’d be able to resist.
I hadn’t been told I was losing my job, but the firm yanked my hockey tickets—the tickets my father had had, and my grandfather before him, since 1946. They gave my tickets to Wyman. “Wyman needs them for business,” they said. “He’s on a roll. Brings in business like shit draws flies.” And now they were going to find out I was losing Torvin & Mays, the biggest account I’d inherited. I’d lost a substantial portion of my father’s book already. I never had his magnetism.
I took Carl Sotterling, Torvin’s CFO, to lunch at Mandy’s, the place Dad took clients. He winked when he shook my hand. He told me the affection he had for my father—indeed, he said my grandfather had given him his first job. He asked about the health of my mother. He seemed genuinely concerned. I thought I could get him to stay. I was wrong. “We’re not getting good execution. You’re missing market trends. I’m not asking for a crystal ball, son, but you haven’t put us in a hedge, swap, cap, or dollar roll that’s worked for over a year.”
I would have to go to a less aggressive shop, where the hall carpets weren’t whisked away at the slightest sign of wear, to a shop perhaps not disreputable but one that fought for business the major firms deemed not quite first tier. My friends, my father, my grandfather had all been big bulge. I would have to go to a bucket shop.
Back in the office, my briefcase stayed closed on my desk. I didn’t take calls. I sat all afternoon waiting for the hand of Max Butterfield, my managing director, to come down on my shoulder. He’d say, “Steve, we need to talk.” It was four o’clock. The phones were quiet. The secretaries were in the conference room throwing a baby shower.
After a while, I closed my door, opened my briefcase, and looked in at the blanket. I smoothed my hand over the top and bent my neck to smell it. I lifted it out and spread it, held it to the light. The holes were bigger than the actual material, which had unraveled in places or simply rotted away. It felt small. And then without thinking I started touching and rubbing, and my office and all the offices around me dissolved.
A buzz on the intercom snapped my neck forward. It was the hospital, calling about whether they should continue my mother’s treatment.
Dr. Naylor met me in her room. We looked at her. Her eyes were closed, her chest filling and falling slowly without rhythm. The doctor handed me a clipboard and I signed the DNR order.
“I’ve put her on ten milligrams.” He pointed to the square button on her morphine pump. “I’ve written an order for thirty.” I nodded. “I’m going out for coffee.”
“What?” I asked. “You’re leaving me here? Alone?”
“You can adjust the dose.”
“We all thought she’d go on forever.” Mrs. Reingold, a neighbor, handed me a paper plate of ham and Swiss squares on the ends of frilly toothpicks.
I left the plate on the rolltop desk in the library and moved into the living room. My father’s partners, my bosses now, were in a huddle by the art books, each with his own plate of square food, all talking at once with full mouths. Max Butterfield, the managing director, stood rigid among them, not talking, not eating, nodding at me across the room when we made eye contact. By now he was certain to have found out about Torvin & Mays. Sotterling sat next to him at the funeral. They were going to let me grieve, give me the week, then give me the ax. Fine. Let it happen.
The women from my mother’s investment club sat on the overstuffed chairs and couches; my mother’s cleaning lady cried alone on the stairs. Greg Wyman, the proud owner of my hockey tickets, was edging into the circle of partners, sidling up to Butterfield. Carl Sotterling dipped ham square after ham square into a ceramic dish of honey mustard.
Over by the fireplace I saw the Butterfield sisters. I broke into a sweat. They were back to back, talking to other neighbors. I hadn’t seen them in years. Victoria was still the plainer of the sisters but was now vaguely attractive, something I had recently become more comfortable with than her sister Robin’s brand of overtly sexual beauty.
Robin stepped into the path of her two boys, who were racing through the rooms, sweating through Brooks for Boys oxford cloth, and reminded them that this was a somber occasion. Then she noticed me. “Steve.” Bangle bracelets jingling as she rushed over, she held me tight around the neck. “She was a second mom to me.” I smelled Diorissimo, honeysuckle. “And this house”—she looked around—“a second home.”
“Oh, yes, your mom was the one we went to during my parents’ divorce.” Victoria had stepped up to my left and I was between them, my tongue balled in my mouth. I was able to hide my unease by appearing to be overcome with grief while the sisters chatted on about Mom and the house, oblivious to the memory of which I was so distinctly aware: a twelve-year-old Robin staring up at the ceiling of the Butterfields’ rec room, her mouth making circles around a wad of banana taffy, while I lay between her thighs, illuminating her vagina with a Boy Scout flashlight, dreaming of the darkness within. Victoria had been an equally willing model. Would do it for free. But for Robin it was business: candy for a display. And it was Robin I wanted to look at.
“So how’s life at Silverman?” Victoria asked. I put my hand in my pants pocket and fingered the key to the steamer trunk where I’d locked the blanket.
“I’m thinking of looking around. Testing the waters for a smaller shop.”
“What? Leave the big bulge?” Victoria asked.
“No!” Robin said.
“Silverman without an Armistead?”
“Dad’ll be so disappointed.”
I shrugged. “Big bulge doesn’t m
ean that much anymore. Anyway, I’ve gotten some offers that may be too good to turn down.” The two women shook their heads, insisting I was way too valuable, saying, “You mustn’t even consider it” and “Put it out of your mind this instant,” as though I’d never been between their legs, as though my hips had never rubbed against their mother’s gray exercise mat.
A crash in the library sent Robin off to stop the boys. They were accosting each other with fire irons. I was left with Victoria, in need of something to break the silence. I gestured toward the food table.
“No one’s eating the duck.”
“It’s a little hard to cut. You know. Lap food.” I appreciated her honesty.
“This is the type of thing my mother handled so well. She’d have known what to serve.”
“You’ve done a fine job.”
“No one will ever love me that much again.” I don’t know where that came from, I just blurted it out. Victoria touched my arm. I started to cry. She reached up and put her arms around my shoulders. I cried and shook in a way I hadn’t since I was a small boy, crying into my mother’s lap. But now I was bent over, nearly doubled, crying into Victoria. People gathered around me, put their hands on me, told me it was okay to cry, to get it all out. I looked up from Victoria’s head and saw her father talking to Sotterling and they were looking at me. I straightened up and wiped my eyes on a napkin. Butterfield put his fingers in the pockets of his jacket and walked over.
“Steve. I know it’s not the best time.”
The son-of-a-bitch, he was actually going to can me right there at my mother’s funeral. Victoria withdrew into the crowd in the kitchen. Butterfield came in close to my ear.
“You’re my new director of asset-backed securities. I want you on the ninth floor near me.” He pulled a handkerchief out of his pocket and dried his eyes. Then he looked at the coat of arms over the dining room fireplace. “I always want an Armistead near me.”
Victoria and I moved through the rooms carrying black trash bags, collecting cups and plates. In the space between the kitchen and dining room we came together and kissed. I led her upstairs to my parents’ room. She pulled the belt of her wrap-around dress, let it open and drop on the floor. Then she lay on my grandmother’s satin quilt and held her arms up to me. I got on top of her and kissed her again, softly, deeply, then ferociously. I couldn’t stop. I couldn’t get enough. I dug my tongue deep into her mouth. She made a choking sound and pushed up on my chest.
“I’m sorry,” I said. I too was out of breath. “I haven’t been with anyone in a long time.”
“No. It’s okay. Just wanted to look at you.” She combed my hair behind my ears. “I’ve always had a thing for you.”
“Oh?”
She nodded. “You always wanted Robin.”
“No, no. I liked you.” She knew I was lying.
“Remember what we used to do?” I felt ashamed and embarrassed. I wished she hadn’t mentioned it. “I still think about it.”
I started moving on top of her. She opened her legs. I closed my eyes, and the image of Robin licking taffy off her lips, her legs wide apart, came to me as it had hundreds of thousands of times before. I stood and unbuttoned my pants. Victoria kicked her ivory string-bikini underwear off her ankle. I got back on top of her and started kissing her neck, rubbing against her, smelling her perfume.
“Mmm. What are you wearing?”
“Sahara.” But it wasn’t Sahara I was smelling. It was honeysuckle and Shalimar, catalpa, urine, and sweat. The blanket was on the bed, under Victoria’s waist. I jolted back, but a strand of yarn caught me at the base of my penis.
“No!” she snapped. “I don’t like that.” The head of my penis was ramming against her anus. I tried to stop but I was being yanked. “I said stop!” I was banging against her and calling out in pain. The more I tried to push away from her, the harder I got pulled. She pushed up on me and scratched me in the face. “You son-of-a-bitch!”
She swung out of the bed and gathered her clothes. The yarn from the blanket was still tight around my penis. I lay back and watched it pull tighter. I was in so much pain I couldn’t speak. I tried to roll the yarn off, but where one string left off another began. It was all one big tangle around my crotch and midsection; I was trying to fight my way out of a cobweb. With the blanket still attached to me, I chased Victoria out of the room.
“I’m sorry,” I called after her on the stairs. “I’ve never done that with anybody. It’s not my thing.”
She glanced back at me. I must have looked ridiculous, as if I were wearing a kilt or a loincloth. In the vestibule, she rewrapped her dress and held up her hand for me not to come near her. Then she stumbled out the door.
I raced into the kitchen in search of something sharp to cut off the yarn. One by one, I nicked at the threads around my penis with a paring knife until finally I’d clipped enough so I could rip the rest of the strand with my fingers. The blanket dropped. I fell back against the counter, moaning in relief. Then I looked down at the blanket, which was bunched up into a little tepee on the floor. I grabbed it in my fist and started slashing it with the knife, trying to slice through it, as though I were disemboweling an animal. After I’d spiked it with the knife, right through the linoleum, I ran upstairs for my clothes and went after Victoria.
Racing around corners in my mother’s New Yorker, challenging other cars to drive faster, I was crazy to find her. I felt I had to get to her, that I couldn’t go another minute without her. It was more than forgiveness; I had to have her. At the intersection of Burnbranche and Spruce, I smelled my mother. And her mother. And all the other smells. I slammed down on the brake with my foot, whipped around, and clenched the blanket in my fist. “What the hell are you doing in my car? What the hell do you want from me?” I shook it as though I were trying to throttle its neck. I tried to stretch it apart with my hands. I smacked it against the window, then shoved it under the seat and stamped on the accelerator. In the middle of the intersection, I made a U-turn and headed for the lake.
I left the car in the parking lot of the waterfront restaurant and shot down to the beach. On the sand, I spread the blanket and weighted down the edges. I found some stones, a half-empty bottle of oil, a waterlogged tennis ball, a soggy sneaker, and a can of paint thinner. I put everything into the center of the blanket and tied off the ends with the lace from the sneaker. Then I lifted the bundle, swung it over my head, and let go. It flew out over the water and sank into the lake.
The water calmed. A boat honked on the horizon. I looked around. It was a perfect spot. The moon shone on the lake, the wedge of light spreading the dark like a woman standing with her legs apart. Behind me there were couples having dinner and drinking at the restaurant. A woman had her foot up on the guardrail; her date was making her laugh. I decided to bring Victoria here. I’d make her laugh too.
Then I noticed a bad smell around me. First, like wet wool, then a rotting marshy smell, then human feces. It was everywhere: in the grasses and shrubs, in the air. I smelled my shirt. It was on me too. I felt what I thought was sweat running down my neck, but it was also moving up. Sand lice. I swiped at my neck and slapped my chest, whipped off my shirt and batted myself down. I hurried over to the car at the edge of the lot.
Driving to Victoria’s the smell became more pronounced, like blood or a dead animal. I felt something crawling in my nose; I tried blowing it into a tissue. Then I sensed something in my ear. Everything itched. Everything burned. I swung the car 180 degrees and headed back to the lake.
From the restaurant, people were leaving in twos, going home to have sex, to wake up together and read the Times. I trudged through the waist-deep water, sinking in the muck up to my calves. The sludge sucked the shoes right off my feet when I pulled up my legs. There was oil floating on the surface, a piece of wood with a protruding nail, rotting fruit peels, a condom. I made a deal that if I found the blanket I would donate five hours a week to cleaning up this mess, to making our waters and coas
ts more beautiful. I would leave my job, give my life to cleaning up the filth. I arrived at what I believed was the point of entry and went under. I waved my arms through the gunk and came up gasping and fighting my need to puke. Again, I filled my lungs with air and surface-dived to the bottom. I grabbed whatever grass root or rock or car part that could move me along the bottom, my arms stretching, my hands searching, smoothing over the mud. I came up choking and empty-handed.
Collapsed on the beach, I wanted to sink into the mud and sand forever. My eyes burned and teared. I was drenched and cold but too crippled to move. Water lapped at my feet. The sand buried my ankles.
Then I felt it. I looked down. The blanket was across my legs. I fingered the wet, frayed material. I embraced it. It felt small and spent. I held on to what was left. I touched and rubbed and sucked. The world blurred. We lay on the dirty beach for a long time. Stillness on the water came and went with passing boats. The restaurant closed. I heard women’s voices, ignitions turning over, motors fading away. A couple who had been making love in the grass nearby climbed out and stepped right over me. Sometime during the night, the clouds covered the moon. We stretched out side by side, together in the dark, hidden.
Beauty and Rudy
Rudy flew a Piper Arrow with a ton of the finest Mexican money can buy and crashed and burned in the Everglades,” Gil said, driving out of the woods and back onto I-95 in a maraschino Impala. “They say the heat from the fire melted a medallion with the sun, the moon, and the planets on it, and now he’s got the solar system branded on his chest.” Gil looked at Stan in the rearview. “They say there’re some pretty free women up there, Stanley. And some folks into astroprojection—you know, out-of-body type stuff. Something I mean to try.”
“Astral projection isn’t real,” Beauty said, trying to rub the pounding of a nitrous hangover from her temples.
“People think it’s a crock because nothing ever materializes,” Gil said. “But things have materialized.”
