The Little Clan

by Iris Martin Cohen

  A little farther on, he stopped in front of a different bar. “I don’t care what it’s like. It’s bound to be warmer and drier than out here.”

  “Agreed.” Ava passed through the door he held open.

  They shuffled between rickety tables and chairs crowded with jackets to the only available booth, a sticky table glowing in the light of a Genesee Cream Ale lamp. As they passed, a young woman in a pink hooded sweatshirt raised an arm and squealed at them with impersonal friendliness, “Whooo, snow day!”

  Ben shook himself free from the stern navy coat and rubbed his hat between his hands. “Can I get you something to drink?” he asked, rather gallantly, Ava thought, for someone who was owed a couple of thousand dollars.

  She flexed her pale, cold knuckles. “Whiskey? Or whatever you’re having.” He seemed like a whiskey drinker. He probably distilled it himself. She then realized that this sounded an awful lot like the kinds of things Stephanie always said about her, then tried to dismiss the thought. As he went to the bar for their drinks, she slid out of her pelts and tried to check her hair in a mirror on the wall, but the angle was wrong, and all she could see was the red, laughing face of someone she felt sure wasn’t old enough to drink. Patsy Cline was playing on the jukebox, and she hummed along, mistaking the lyrics. In the warmth of the bar, everything felt easier, less weighted with consequence.

  Ben returned. “I hope bourbon’s okay.” She smiled to let him know that it was and clinked her short heavy glass against his. The whiskey was sharp and oily, blistering and perfect. “So here we are,” he said. “It took a while.” When she glanced up, she knew that he was not referring to having found a warm, dry place to drink, and she couldn’t stop from smiling in a kind of hopeful way. “I’ve never been very good at seizing the day,” he continued by way of apology. “I take too long to do everything, as you know.”

  “You are very conscientious,” Ava agreed. “But so am I. Usually,” she amended.

  “And I’m sorry I was such a jerk about the money.” Ava’s stomach seized up, but he was looking at his thumbs. “It’s just that I wanted to be able to make it for you for free. And I couldn’t. That’s why I got so mad. Not at you so much. At New York for being so expensive. At myself for being poor.”

  “No, you were totally right. You’re so nice and generous. I’m so sorry. I should have stood up for you. Stephanie is just so fierce sometimes, and I lose heart. She can be very persuasive.”

  “I get that, but still, it’s funny that she has such sway over you. I mean, she does have a kind of force, like a hurricane or a bird of prey. I feel like I’ve seen hawks with a similar look in their eye, but she’s just a type. New York is filled with girls like that.”

  Ava was torn between the urge to defend her friend and a kind of relief at hearing someone voice the suspicions shared in her darker moments. “I always thought it might be nice to be a type. If people have a way to place you, I think you draw less ire, less attention, less bullying. Or at least you’d know why it happened. I feel like I’m always a mystery.”

  “You’re a type,” he said confidently. “You’re those girls that like Anne of Green Gables and then get into swing dancing or something.” Ava wasn’t at all sure she liked this, and Ben noticed something in her expression because he clarified. “I’m a type, too,” he offered. “The last of the gentleman artist scholar naturalists, a great tradition. Science and art and the study of nature used to all be complementary activities, now not so much, unfortunately.”

  “Nabokov chased butterflies,” Ava said.

  “I know.” He smiled.

  “Well, if you’re the last, aren’t you lonely?”

  “Sometimes you find other weirdos.”

  A large gulp of whiskey hit Ava’s chest, blooming warmth. “Wouldn’t that be wonderful? That’s why I started all this. But somehow I keep not getting it quite right. Maybe it’s just too fancy. I thought I would find the oddballs and outsiders and thinkers and writers, but they don’t really hang out with the rich and successful crowd that Stephanie does.” She stopped. “It seems so obvious when I say it out loud. The person that I actually want to meet is sitting in a room somewhere, shy and lonely, filled with weird, unmanageable feelings, reading and writing books for the pleasure of watching thoughts become words. Not at a dumb party.” Ava stared at the table. Was it possible she hadn’t really thought this through before now? But another feeling quickly sprang up—the shape of Stephanie, and with it, a piercing need to hold her close against the threat of separation rustling at the logical end of her train of thought.

  “So you are a writer.”

  It took Ava a moment to refocus her attention on the man in front of her, surprised to find him across the table, extending a cheerful inquiry into her innermost thoughts. She hesitated. “Ridiculous three syllable words and subordinate clauses used to just pour out of me,” she admitted. “I used to want to describe the whole world in a million overwrought, old-fashioned, unnecessary words.”

  “That doesn’t sound so bad. What happened?”

  “I realized how tiresome it was for everyone else.” She started a quick succession of small sips that drained her glass. “And it’s really hard. I keep trying, but I can’t get everything to click. So I just keep writing around stuff and nothing ever happens.” It felt nice to be able to confide in someone.

  “Maybe you’re not being honest.” Ava started to get indignant, so he quickly added, “Or maybe that’s just me. When I get stuck, it’s usually because I’m hiding from something or getting caught up in my own bullshit. But what do I know about writing books? So what’s up next for the House of Mirth?” he said, politely switching topics.

  Ava twirled her empty glass in slow circles on the table for a minute, unsure whether to defend herself further. She decided not to. “More parties? I wanted to have lectures and talks and things, but the dumb truth is that I’m just really bad at setting stuff up. You have to call people on the phone, and that gives me stomachaches. So I don’t do it and then the parties Stephanie wants to have just seem to happen all on their own.”

  “I could help if you want.” He leaned forward too eagerly and then, catching himself, leaned back again and looked at his drink. “I used to run a lecture series at school. I’ve always wanted to start up again. That kind of thing can really get you noticed. And your place is so amazing.”

  His eagerness touched a sympathetic chord in her. “Are you sure you want to? Our events always seem to get a little—” she paused, looking for the word “—dissolute.”

  “I suspect I’m a little less fastidious than you are.” This hadn’t been Ava’s impression at all, but she chose not to argue. “I would love to start the House of Mirth inaugural lecture series on Art and the Natural World, whoever decides to come, however dissolute.” She clinked the glass he held out to her. Finally someone was going to organize something substantive in her club. The prospect of another shared project also reassured her; she would get to see more of him, and maybe this time she wouldn’t mess it all up again. Also, there was a chance that he wouldn’t want to host a lecture under a mirror that was about to fall and kill someone. “I’ve been thinking a lot about old navigational charts lately. Maybe we can do something about that.” He stood, extending a hand.

  “I would drink to that.” Ava relinquished her glass. He was being really, unnecessarily generous.

  While he was at the bar, Ava again felt that funny feeling she noticed in his company, admiration, and its long dark shadow, envy. What would it feel like, she wondered, to have such confidence in your interests? To walk through the world, broad shouldered and self-content, bringing forth the fruits of your imagination as if they deserved to exist? Even now, she envied him across the room ordering their drinks with the casual entitlement of vertical parity; how nice to ask a bartender for what you wanted without the supplication inherent in being a foot shorter. His
easy occupation in the world seemed to imply strength, and out of strength, courage, and his appeal melted into a moment of covetous longing.

  “Did you know you can still navigate boats using sixteenth-century charts?” he said, when he got back. “It’s kind of amazing.”

  “I like that you like old things.” Ava spoke softly, twirling the crumbled red plastic straw from her previous drink. “What with your suspenders and hobnailed boots.”

  “Belt buckles get in the way if you use a table saw.”

  This felt a little like a repudiation of her, and Ava looked at him skeptically. “I don’t think you look like a Civil War soldier home on leave without trying to.”

  He laughed. “I think from you that’s a compliment, but I don’t like stuff just because it’s old. Old things are well made.”

  “That’s important to me, too. I’m obviously a kindred spirit. Look—” she brought her knee up to the table, lifting her skirt as modestly as she could “—I’m wearing garters. Sometimes, also called suspenders.” It occurred to her that she was getting a little drunk.

  He looked at his glass. Then his eyes slid over to her thigh, and she put her leg down. “To be honest, you’re the first person I’ve ever met to have such a distinctive aesthetic that wasn’t an artist. I don’t mean just your clothes or anything. But your way of looking at the world is unique and strangely coherent. It made a lot of sense when I found out you were a writer.” He toyed with his glass for a minute, and Ava tried to stay calm against the desperate surging of her heart; he was describing just the person she had always dreamed of being and felt so far from at present. She focused hard on the uneven rolls of blue oxford shirt bunched tightly on his forearms. Pushed up like that, they seemed so redolent of a task only just abandoned, something industrious, a drafting table, a carpenter’s level. He finished his drink in one swallow. “I’m bad at articulating these kinds of things.”

  Ava noticed a callus on the soft hollow between his forefinger and thumb and wanted to touch it and see if it was as rough as it looked. She wanted him to keep talking forever, so that she could gaze at herself in the flattering image he was creating. “I wish you were right. My project is a mess. My life is a mess. I’m so compromised.”

  “Ugh, me, too.” He laughed. “It’s hard not to be. Maybe we need more drinks.”

  In the rest of the bar, the festive atmosphere had escalated. Sweaty girls in thin tank tops danced in the center of the room, a chair was knocked over, a young man let forth a booming laugh. Ava and Ben’s desultory attempts to settle on a new topic of conversation faded softly as the noise in the room increased. Everything they brought up felt too pedestrian, but they both sensed that a further incursion into the sticky recesses of their deeper selves would be too much. “Maybe we should just get out of here. It’s getting kind of loud.” Ben looked past the bare arms and swinging hips of the dance floor to the plate glass windows. On the other side, snow was gusting sideways in grand, sweeping arcs that alternated with a slow, dreamy falling. “Although I don’t know where we could go. It’s crazy out there.”

  Ava leaned out of the booth to see for herself; New York had become a violently shaken snow globe caught in the four corners of the dirty window. “I don’t have anywhere to be,” she said.

  “We could just walk. It’s kind of beautiful,” he suggested timidly.

  Suddenly Ava, who had spent so much of her youth inside watching the world from over the rim of a book, wanted very much to be outside with him in the wild, fraught, cold of the storm. She agreed. He held her coat for her, tucking it around her shoulders with careful attention, and they passed through the young sweaty bodies and left the bar.

  Outside, the snow was knee-high. Patrons of different bars poured into the street, chasing and grappling with school yard enthusiasm in the thick, white evening. A gust of wind sent a shower of snow from the top of the streetlamps. Someone yelled, “Blizzard Party!” and a snowball flew overhead. Stepping carefully around a pair of Ugg boots making a snow angel, Ava and Ben turned into the first street they came to, and a perfect stillness caught them. Here, shielded from the wind, snow fell constantly and gently onto the steps and eaves of facing brownstones. The demarcation between sidewalk and street had disappeared under the unbroken drifts, and they pushed forward with large slow steps. It was as if no one had ever walked down this street before. The smell of wood smoke crept from affluent homes. “Listen.” Ava’s whisper carried surprisingly well in the hush of the snow-dampened night.

  Ben closed his eyes. “I never thought silence could be so loud.”

  She kept talking, unwilling to relinquish this luxury of whispering on a New York street. “I’m glad we came out.”

  “Me, too.”

  Ava wanted to glance at him but didn’t, and her ears got hot. She laughed, but it was a fake laugh, and it came out too loud, and the quiet of the street only made it more grating. “This cold is making my nose run,” she said wiping a glove under her nose, which wasn’t, in fact, running.

  “Yeah.” Ben sniffed violently, proving that his was. They moved forward unsteadily through the deepening snow. “Are we walking too fast? Is my stride too long? I’m sorry.” Courteously he slowed down, even though she had been setting their pace.

  “No, it’s me. I’m really not dressed for this weather.”

  He looked disturbed by her wet skirt and stockings. “I feel like I should carry you.” Then, as if embarrassed at having made the offer, he starting going through his pockets. “That was a dumb thing to say, but seeing girls look cold always gets me. I feel like half the women in New York don’t wear socks in the winter, and I’m always worried about their feet.” Ava tried to think of how to articulate the many contrary pressures that lead women to such seemingly impractical choices, but she suspected he wouldn’t understand. He held out a small silver flask. “I had the bartender fill it up before we left.” He faced her, his back making a bulwark against the flurries. “At least you won’t notice your wet feet as much.”

  “It’s not so bad, really.” She took the flask and sipped from it, feeling just a little silly as she pursed her lips around the delicate spout.

  He took back the flask and drank with just a hint of urgency; then, replacing it in his pocket, he didn’t turn and resume his place beside her. He didn’t move at all, looking at her instead with the directness of a person unaware that the steadfastness of his expression loudly signals his intent. “I’m glad you called,” he said. “I felt really bad about how things ended.”

  “Sorry.” She was about to confess everything when, glancing up, she realized he was coming toward her, and a flash of confusion stopped her words, followed immediately by concern. The distress of seeing someone so vulnerable, a fear for his sake of being rejected, or rather, an empathetic terror of imagining the fear of rejection that he must be experiencing overwhelmed her, and to save him the unpleasantness of it, she quickly threw her arms around his neck and kissed him first.

  When they made contact, Ava slammed into the possibility that his reality didn’t follow the lines of her imagination so closely. He didn’t kiss like a man relieved of a terrible anxiety. He wrapped his arms around her furry back and pulled her toward him with leisurely intent. His mouth pressed against hers, and she realized that Ben did not need any of her help. His habit of diffidence seemed to recede along with the necessity of words, and she giggled from nerves and surprise.

  He pulled back only about as far as her nose to look at her questioningly. The upturned collar of his coat cut a sharp angle against his flushed cheeks. She was trying to process this new development, whether this additional interest meant that at some point she might be entitled to breach that air of self-sufficiency he exuded. A possible future presented itself in which she was allowed to trespass on his person, to unbutton the double-breasted armor of this coat and press against him, burrowing into the imagined warmth of his chest.
She thought of the wealth of things he could potentially make for her if, in fact, he liked her like that. He was everything she had ever wanted.

  She tried to say something but, instead, breathlessly shook her head because she had no idea what she should say, and let her arms around his neck bear more of her weight as he kissed her again. The snow that hit their faces melted into little streams of cold water that made everything slipperier and sloppier, and Ava kept accidentally bumping up against the hard lines of his jaw. She realized she must be a terrible kisser, she’d had so little practice, and the more she tried not to focus on this fact, the harder it was to forget. He pressed forward undeterred, and a new sensation leapt up from deep inside, filling her with heat and delight. He was so smart and talented and full of admirable virtues, and he was choosing her. “Why don’t we go somewhere warm?” she asked.

  But Ben was already walking toward the subway, pulling her along with a flattering hurry.

  * * *

  The snow had stopped when they got off the train, arm in arm, smiling awkwardly in unspoken acknowledgment of what was to come. It was dark, and the lights of Chinese take-out counters and dollar stores lit up the street under the elevated subway tracks. Families hurried past, kids bundled in strollers. Different Spanish radio stations banged up against each other from adjacent bodegas. A guy hanging out on a corner puckered his lips at Ava until, noticing Ben, he murmured an apology. The train clattered overhead, and they turned onto a desolate industrial block.

  Ava thought they must be near the river because the wind howled down the wide expanse of low warehouses, rustling cardboard boxes tied for recycling and flapping the shredded plastic bags caught in the razor wire of empty lots. She could see the appeal of coming home to a street like this; it made her feel lonely, in a bleak, romantic way, a street that made you hunch into your jacket and feel alone and think about art. If she lived on a street like this she would probably write bad poetry about windblown plastic and the moon and the promises of a spring that never seemed to arrive. She considered saying something about it, but a wave of shyness hit her, and she kicked an empty cigarette pack, lying forlorn in the snow.