Thirty-three Swoons

by Martha Cooley

  “Did she say he’d made it himself?”

  Sam shook his head. “No. But Cam, you wore that same scent, not long after I met you. And I asked you about it, and you said it was something your father had created. Lune, wasn’t it? It was your favorite—and Eve’s, too, you said—and it had never been marketed. You and she were the only people who wore it. That’s when I realized who Eve had been involved with.

  “And you knew, too,” he finished. “Maybe not consciously, but you knew.”

  I STOOD and turned away. In an instant he was on his feet, his hands grasping my elbows from behind.

  I spoke into the air before me. “What would you have said if you had talked with me about Eve?”

  His grip on my elbows loosened as he considered my question. “I would’ve told you she’d been marked by whatever happened with your father. No, more than that—I think she was ruined by it, early on. And her particular ruination ruined you.”

  He rotated me so we were facing each other. “Which is why Danny spent as much time with us as she did. Not just because she needed to feel safe, but also because you did.” His gaze was unfaltering. “She was the child you could have, wasn’t she? You saw yourself in her—the only child of a single parent, a parent completely preoccupied with somebody else. Someone you, too, were longing for. . . .”

  His cell phone began ringing. “Sorry,” he murmured. “Okay,” he responded into the receiver. “Yeah. Be there soon.”

  “Lila?” I asked as he snapped the phone shut.

  “No, Danny. She says we should come on over. She wants us to see the wall of masks.”

  Did I really want the three of us together in the same place—that place, my place—by ourselves? “All right,” I said uneasily. “But can you—I mean, where does Lila think you are tonight, anyway?”

  “She knows I’m here.”

  “And she’s cool with that?”

  “Completely.” He walked to the roof hatch and backed down its ladder; I followed. “Can we make a pit stop before we leave?” he asked when we were in the corridor. “I’m thirsty.”

  “Of course. I’m thirsty, too.” I led the way. Stopping outside my apartment door, I patted my pockets. “Danny’s got my keys,” I said. “For here as well as the shop. My spares are inside.”

  Sam pulled out his key ring. “I have mine,” he said.

  “Still?”

  “Still. Lucky for us.”

  I STEPPED aside so he could unlock and open my door. Entering, he went automatically for the light, sliding its dimmer switch. It was at that point, as I stood in the doorway staring at him, that I was able to perceive Sam as he’d been years earlier: not just my husband but my partner onstage, a fellow actor in an improvised performance. A family drama, with me playing the mother and Sam substituting for Billy Deveare. Who was filling in (though none of us knew it) for Jordan.

  And Danny, playing herself. The girl who longed for Eve’s love yet had learned—like me—to act as though she didn’t.

  “Cam, you okay?” Sam called from the kitchen.

  Rousing myself, I walked down the hallway. Sam handed me a glass of water, staring at me as I drank it. “Where are you?”

  “Where am I? . . .” It wasn’t until I answered him that I realized I’d begun weeping. Sam took me into his arms. Pressed against his chest, I battled to overcome not desire or remorse but sorrow, the underlay of my love for him, whose ingress now felt as unstoppable as it always had.

  “Tell me one more thing, please.” He wasn’t finished with our dialogue.

  “Sam—”

  Releasing me, he pulled a clean handkerchief from his pocket—one of the white cotton ones I’d given him stacks of when we were married. “Here,” he said.

  I took the handkerchief and waved it at him like a flag of surrender.

  “Eve wanted Jordan to be the father of her child, didn’t she? Because she was in love with him all along.”

  “Jordan was Danny’s only possible father,” I said. “That’s how Eve saw it—how she felt it.” Now my phone began to ring. When I picked up, Danny was on the other end.

  “Where are you two? You coming over?”

  “Very soon,” I answered.

  “Good—because now I’m really done.” She sounded energized. “Get moving!”

  I hung up and turned to face Sam. I realized what I wanted. The realization was nearly visual, as though my heart were a lens and I’d finally twirled it into focus.

  “I have to see Danny,” I said.

  “Okay, let’s go.”

  “No, alone, Sam. By myself.”

  There was a long silence. “All right,” he responded. His shrug said he’d acquiesce, though to what exactly he wasn’t sure. “Walk me to the corner?”

  WE PROCEEDED downstairs and out into the night air, cooler now. At the corner of Bedford Street, beneath a streetlamp, we both halted.

  “Don’t forget to get your keys back,” Sam said.

  I nodded.

  “Say good night to her for me.” He hesitated, hands at his side. The forefinger of his left hand was pressed down on his thumb, in that same unconscious display of uncertainty Stuart had observed long ago.

  “I just realized something about you and fatherhood,” I said. “You’re able to be three different kinds of father at the same time, aren’t you? You inherited Abby. You get to raise Zeke from scratch. Nobody’s standing between the two of you.” I paused. “And now there’s Danny. . . .”

  “Danny’s ours,” Sam said quietly. “I never at any point suspected she was mine—physically, I mean—but I’ve always felt she was ours.”

  Something was working its way out of me, a sharp splinter seeking an exit. “There’s no ‘ours,’ Sam.”

  His expression was wary. “Why not?”

  “Because there’s no ‘us.’ There was, when we were married. For a time. But it never could’ve lasted. Not unless I’d produced a kid—other than Danny, that is.”

  A couple approached us. The woman was wearing a perfume I recognized, a commercially popular scent with a pronounced top note of hyacinth. Jordan would’ve found it banal, insufficiently veiled. Was that it, the key to my father’s perfume-making—his insistence upon disguise? In the woman’s wake I detected a residue of newly mown grass, crisp and clean; it leavened her perfume’s initial sweetness but did little to subvert its predictability. Jordan had taught me well enough: I knew when a fragrance showed its hand too clearly.

  “Say more.” Pulling his hands from his pockets, Sam gave my forearms an urgent shake. “Please.”

  I was feeling a little dazed, and the silvery light cast by the streetlamp had a peculiarly silencing effect on me. Even the passing cars made, I noticed, almost no sound. As I closed my eyes for a few seconds, Meyerhold appeared, his cloak swirling, beckoning; then he vanished.

  Sam stood before me, waiting.

  “Since Eve’s death I’ve been having lots of dreams,” I said. “About who’s who in my life. Who’s been who, I should say. And who’s stood in—who’s substituted. . . . I’m having to reconsider all the roles, my own included. Especially the part I’m playing with Danny. I’m no longer an understudy here, Sam. I’m not sure exactly what that means, but I know I can’t stay in the wings any longer.”

  He leaned forward, his lips lightly brushing my cheek. “You’re on, then,” he said quietly. Moments later, he’d crossed the street, and I knew something between us had ended. I was freed, not of him but for Danny. And not to make her mine but to make myself hers, newly, unmasked.

  THE FOURTH Wall’s front door was unlocked. Entering, I found the interior lit and Danny nowhere to be seen.

  I moved to the center of the shop. On the wall to the right, a dozen distinctive masks—made of wood, cloth, papier-mâché, metal, and synthetics—were arrayed in a large circle about six feet in diameter. The largest four occupied the compass points of the circle; the smaller masks were arranged in pairs between them.

  Danny had
evidently rooted around in my chest of fabrics, for she’d suspended from the ceiling a sheer cotton drape that covered the circle completely. It served as a kind of mask of the masks—a lovely translucent screen through which the twelve visages could be perceived. Collectively they hinted at a blurry clock face, or a dozen actors ringing a circular stage. Danny had created something subtle and lovely—just what I’d hoped for, and nothing I could’ve achieved myself.

  I let out a little moan of appreciation, and she heard me. “You there, Cam?” she called.

  Her voice was coming from my office. Approaching, I heard the familiar thwak of a dart hitting cork. “Are you—”

  I stopped in the doorway. A dart flew across the room, striking one of six small photos affixed to my dartboard. There we were: Eve, Sam, and myself, each of our faces appearing twice on the perimeter of the board.

  Taking aim, Danny tossed again. This time she missed the photos but struck close to the bull’s-eye. She was standing at the required distance from the board, and she seemed to have no trouble gauging how hard to throw. She had good form, too: her stance was correct, and her wrist performed each flick unhesitatingly.

  “Where’d you learn to play?” I asked after quelling my surprise.

  “I’ve never played before.” She gave another toss; the dart hit Sam. “I just started fooling around . . . It took you forever to get here!” Making a connection between the image she’d just struck and the man’s absence, she added, “Where’s Sam?”

  I opted for simplicity. “I sent him home.”

  My reply seemed not to disconcert her. “So I came into your office to make myself a nightcap,” she said, motioning toward a bottle of vodka and a shot glass. “And I saw this curtain and wondered what was behind it. I was curious because I’d just done my own thing out there—you saw it? And voilà! Another curtain, right in here. . . . Cheers,” she added, reaching for her glass. “Make yourself a drink—it’s your vodka, Cam! Hope you don’t mind I’m playing your game, too.”

  I shook my head. “How’d you know about the photos?”

  “You mean the fact that you used them as targets? Well, I was looking for the darts, and I snooped around and found everything—all your props—right there in the top drawer of your desk. You’re so well organized!” She paused to take aim. “Now I know why that picture of your mother had all those tiny holes in it . . .”

  She tossed. “Oops!” she exclaimed as her dart bounced off one of the board’s rims. “I’m doing my own version of the Motley Crew game.”

  Her energy was palpably manic. “So let me ask you a question, Cam.” She rounded up all the darts she’d just tossed. “When you play this game by yourself, are you expressing hostility, or something else? Like resentment maybe? No, that’s too petty! Something bigger. Frustration? But not your average case of frustration . . .”

  She winged a dart, striking Eve. A moment later another one sailed. “Or maybe this sport has another purpose? Maybe it’s the perfect game to play when you’re furious with someone, since you can’t tell her how much she fucked up—because she died! Of all things! You listening, Cammie? Or have you checked out?”

  “No,” I replied as anxiety saturated me. “I’m right here.”

  “Good.” She threw a dart that pinned Eve squarely. The next one went wide, glancing off the lower rim of the board and clattering onto the floor. “On the other hand,” she continued, “maybe this is the ideal game to play when you’ve done something you weren’t supposed to.” Another dart, another face impaled: Sam’s. “Like, say, fooling around with your father . . .”

  I sat down, dizzy now. “Fooling around?”

  She glanced at me, took in my distress, and clucked her tongue. “Oh, no, not that, Cammie!—I phrased it wrong. Calm down. I didn’t mean fucking!” She swept up the darts and put them in their drawer. “Fucking’s so overrated! Kissing’s my favorite sexual act. It’s so much more essential than everything else. Don’t you think?”

  She saw me begin to cry, and circled behind me. “Don’t agitate yourself,” she said, coming up behind me and rubbing my shoulders lightly. “It happened during the summer of my junior year of college. A while ago, five years . . . the distant past.”

  JUNIOR YEAR: when she was twenty. The summer of 1994. Three years after our divorce, a few months before Sam began seeing Lila.

  “Tell me,” I said to Danny.

  Moving to my desk, she sat on it, bouncing her legs as she spoke. “Well, one evening in August, Sam and I went out to dinner. Afterward we took a long walk. I didn’t feel like going back to Mom’s apartment right away—actually I didn’t want to go back there at all.

  “That morning she’d taken a shower, gone into her bedroom, and shut the door. She hadn’t come out. I thought this might be one of her three-day withdrawals. I was home all day, working on a design project, and I walked past her door several times, but everything was quiet.

  “Before leaving to meet Sam, I stood outside her door and put my ear against it. I knew she knew I was there, listening, but she didn’t budge. I started yelling at her through the door. ‘Just cut me loose,’ I said. ‘Because if you don’t, I’ll cut myself loose. Wouldn’t you rather it happened on your terms?’

  “I could hear her getting off her bed, and then her door opened, and we stared at each other. She looked ratty and beautiful at the same time . . . And she said, ‘It’s good to have someone like Sam in your life—someone you’re close to, like a father . . . Don’t get too close, though.’”

  Pushing herself off my desk, Danny walked over to the dartboard and drew the curtain across it. “She was trying to make me afraid of Sam. Which made me furious with her—angrier than I’d ever been. I told her to fuck off, and she turned around and closed her door in my face.

  “So I went out and met up with Sam. I didn’t tell him about what had just happened between Mom and me; we talked about other things at dinner. After our walk, just as we were standing on the street, saying good-bye, I put my arms around his neck and my mouth on his. Obviously I wasn’t just giving him a peck. I felt him hesitate, then stop hesitating. We both drew back, and I laughed, because I found the whole thing funny. And thrilling. And scary, and—necessary, somehow. Because I was proving Mom wrong.

  “Sam didn’t laugh; he looked stunned. I said, ‘There, we did it,’ but it looked like a huge wave of guilt had just bagged him, so I told him we’d gotten it out of our systems, and it was fine. We were fine.

  “That seemed to calm him a bit. But I could tell he wasn’t fully okay, so I said I wouldn’t be having a hard time, and I expected him not to have one either. He walked me home, and we said good night, and I went to bed feeling like I’d just won a prize or something.

  “When I got up the next morning, Mom had already left for work. That day I packed up all my stuff—I didn’t have much, mostly clothing, a few books and CDs—and moved into my friend Amanda’s place. When Mom came home that night, I was gone. I’d left her a note saying I wouldn’t be back.”

  I NODDED: this part of Danny’s story I knew already. She’d called me the evening of her arrival at her friend’s apartment, to tell me she’d left Eve’s for good. It had been impossible for me to talk her into returning, or at least calling her mother. She’d refused any suggestions along those lines. I’ve had it, she’d said, and I’d heard in her voice a new certainty. This time her renunciation of Eve would be unbudging.

  “In September I returned to college for my final year,” Danny went on. “Mom called me every month, but I kept my distance. She’d released me, you know, just like I’d asked her to. She did it by going after Sam. That’s all it took to get me to turn my back on her—as she knew I would.”

  I imagined Danny at night during recent weeks, alone. Listening to “Pannonica” until the small hours. Hoping the music would drown out her guilt; knowing it wouldn’t.

  “It’s taken me this long to understand what happened, Cam. That summer Mom was trying to stop me from fa
lling for a man she knew might be—was, in all likelihood—my father. She wasn’t able to tell me that, though. She wasn’t willing to let go of the story about Billy, or her fantasy about Jordan. She’d needed that for too long . . . So there we are,” she finished.

  MY OPTIONS lay before me.

  I could tell Danny what her mother had said to me at Sam’s wedding. Eve had wanted to ruin not just Danny’s relationship with Sam, but mine as well. Hadn’t she deserved to suffer for that?

  Yet things weren’t so simple. I’d encouraged Danny to trust me and mistrust her mother; wasn’t that called stealing the lead? And since Eve’s death, I’d been trying to have it both ways—revealing and concealing myself at the same time. As my dream director had lately done everything in his power to point out to me.

  Spill it, I could hear Stuart saying.

  “Danny,” I began, “I don’t know what to say about Eve’s motives. There’s so little any of us can really claim we knew. All I can talk about—all I want to talk about, now—is us. Look, I’m not your sister. Or your first cousin once removed. That’s just a slot on a genealogy chart. I have no idea what I am to you. None of the usual labels seem to apply.” I rested my hands on her shoulders. “I can’t possibly do without you, though. Regardless of what we call it—us, I mean. Us.”

  She raised her arms and lay her own hands on my shoulders, so our bodies described a square of space between us. Stepping forward into that space, she clasped and then released me. “Can I stay at your place tonight, Cam? It’s awfully late.”

  SHE SACKED out on my sofa bed, and we both slept in till nearly noon. I awoke feeling calmer than I had in months.

  After showering, Danny offered to take me out for brunch. I protested, then saw she wanted this—wanted to make a clear gesture, not of thanks but of openness—so I said yes. We proceeded to a nearby café, and Danny ordered us French toast, fruit, and café au lait. Gazing at the café’s serene walls, I found myself visualizing my shop.